A Hazard of 
New Fortunes 


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NORTH CAROLINA 
ENDOWED BY THE 
DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
SOCIETIES 


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THE LIBRARY OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF 


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they could have hequired in no a a aye — 
. Ye Pribune, ¢: 4 

No other living” writer: abcd give ‘us this 
- picture of a literary movement with such deli- 
cacy of. appreciation and discri imination, — 
» Hartford Courant, * 

In culture, the critical power, and i in Titer: ary 
art these essays. possess qualities reached by no 


“ANNIE KILBURN. - 


° Mr. Howells has certainly 1 never given us in 
one novel so many portraits of intrinsic jnter- 
e eBt: 
>». quietly veracious art—the art which depends - 

~- for its effect on unswerving fidelity to the truth 
_ of nature, It certainly seems tous the very 
- best book that Mr, Howells has Aba —Spec- 
-tator, London: 

beago ‘gentle humor, and a mild, Hemi and» 
thoughtful philosophy make the book eloquent, 
No more distinct or charming “‘ type of ve 


APRIL HOPES. 12mo, Cloth, $1 6 


Mr: Howells never wrote a more hewicer 
book. It is useless to deny the rarity and wor th ¢ 
oie _of the skill that can report-so perfectly and with ~ 
hee) such exquisite humor all the fugacious and 
“~~ manifold emotions of the modern maiden and. 
~ her lover.— Philadelphia Press, — 

In the dissection of human motive, among 
writers in the English language, Mr. Howells 
stands unrivalled.— Westminster Reoiew, London. 

The great charm of Mr. Howells’s writing is 

the fidelity with which he Teproduces the 


“THE MOUSE-TRAP, 


Mr, Howells can make his characters talk de- 


wipe - 


- lightful badinage, or he can make them talk so 
~ characteristically as to fill the reader with silent 
-Jaughter over their complete unconsciousness’ 


of their own absurdity.— Boston Advertiser. 
. . ~ ~Exceptionally brilliant — 
ca es -Churehman, WAY 


to say that no acu 
| passes Mr, Howells 


his theme, in that light and indescribable t 
that lifts you over a. whole sea of froth-a 


| foam, and fixes your eye, not on the froth ‘ 
-foam, but on the solid objects, the. Pheer 


_ 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. caee + eae 


f ‘drawn many. The -book will: please all i 
- Annie Kilburn herself is a masterpiece of 


and. Other Farces. 


and diverting. — 


~ There is: nothing at all like ee in English, 


; Me ‘Hoswells ae in tile work. Ecvinea ee | America 

~ ican literature by a great deal of delicate, dis- | ing” 
- criminating, candid, and sympathetic criticism, E 
~ He has” ‘enabled the general public to obtain ‘a | Ii 
~ knowledge of modern Italian poetry which | 


poets; musing: 
to the’ brim-with g 


‘irony, in effective and ye , 


and soul of the: theme, re, A ¥. 


has been drawn by Mr. Howells, ‘and he h 


reailers, and set them Bue —Seotsman, Ed 
inbur eh, 3 

* Ralph Putnam,’ is assuredly a most: origin 
type. His shrewd philosophy, his liberal cree 
his sense of honor and justice, his one. weaknes 
are so picturesquely and pathetically blend 
together as to make a strong and clear indivi 
uality.. Nothing could be more samanle, 
ee ee eras He 


ie Kaen 


i eat ods ad gestures of f ordinary: peo 
ple in the ordinary. relations of life, . . . This 
power of fascinating the reader by ‘bringing 
home to him men and women and things o} 
every-day life is conspicuously shown in. “Ap i 
Hopts.”—Literary World, Boston, = 
A delightfully humorous | and penetrating % 
study of Boston society. . .. It isin this tender 
and are analysis of youthful’ folly and = 
youthful joy of living that Mr. Howells is: par- 
ticularly successful. — Boston. ae 4 


Post 8vo, Cloth, SL 00, 


of the sort, Mr. Howells holds his a 
with his Gallic rivals, and has mad 
tinctively his own. The charmin 
in it elements of perpetual delight, : 
one never tires of reading these de 
surdities.—Boston Beacon. - st 
Those who like brilliant: 
strained fun, and maste rly: 
will find in them: a ich t1 


: and while the French sometimes do Pometniee: 


 Penusien BY. HARPER & BROTHERS, 


UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 


ITN 


0000871372 


[See Page 31.] 


MR, MARCH MEETS AN OLD FRIEND. 


Aecl. 7S -/-20 Sh A WA wipe 


A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES 


A Tovel fcywes 
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To, 
BY Sa 


WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 


4 AUTHOR OF 
**‘ APRIL HOPES” ‘‘ ANNIE KILBURN” ‘‘ MODERN ITALIAN POETS” ETO. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
1890 


Copyright, 1889, by Writram Dean Howes, 


-_——- 


All rights reserved. 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


MR. MARCH. MEETS AN OLD FRIEND 5 eas Wi ale Wore UM oa Ste aR UES a eR eas cities de gale aut TOTLLLRDIUECE, 


‘THEY STOOD ON THE OUTSIDE STEPS OF THE VAST EDIFICE BEETLING LIKE 
A GRANITE CRAG ABOVE THEM....MARCH ABSENTLY LIFTED HIS EYES 


TO eS es es esac ee eck ee ee cee eeoeeveeee2 8 28 2 8 @ 


eee eee ese oe oo 


**WHEN HE WENT TO HER ROOM FROM HIS LIBRARY, HE FOUND HER BEFORE 
THE GLASS THOUGHTFULLY REMOVING THE FIRST DISMANTLING PIN FROM 
MRE Tee ET ATE Sata 2 F0 Gs y's sae aie tale eee ae owed eae Oo Oe eae hin eer 


*“HIS WIFE BRUSHED SOME CRUMBS FROM HER LAP BEFORE RISING. ‘YES. 
YOU MUSTN’T WASTE ANY OF THESE IDEAS NOW’”’....cccccrecccccccces 


**MARCH, WHEN HE HAD RECOVERED HIS SELF-COMMAND A LITTLE IN THE 
PRESENCE OF THE AGGLOMERATION, COMFORTED HIMSELF BY CALLING 
THE BRIC-A-BRAC JAMESCRACKS, AS IF THIS WAS THEIR FULL NAME”... 


*‘~HEY CAME OUT RELUCTANT INTO THE DAZZLE AND BUSTLE OF THE 
NORM E, 6 sk ocgie ss dee ge wceelaese gid Ais Sate ten POL IR Aird tr ak os a Hae ORO 


SEPM IIS RATEH, . .. cee cc cee race scene MHOd ere OndSOH OOOG Oo DOD SECO OO 60 mo 


“TI PUT OUT MY HAND, AND I SAID, ‘ISNT THIS MR. DRYFOOS FROM 


79 


PRUNE MEMES MARIN Res lolig 'o''s! cielo Fle) cso) ore! cles! siisiisi sy nim)e-s) 1m eve sich) o1% os! 2) 616) stole alehaltuicteusiiale aleys 


“MR. WOODBURN CONSENTED TO SIT DOWN, AND HE REMAINED LISTENING 
TO MRS. LEIGHTON WHILE HIS DAUGHTER BUSTLED UP TO THE SKETCHES 
_ PINNED ROUND THE ROOM AND QUESTIONED ALMA ABOUT THEM”’...... 


“SHE LOOKED HIM FULL IN THE FACE, BRILLIANTLY SMILING, AND INTEN- 
Epa EUIUA TIDE Utian ccc ccc cc ccc ebejecccsbesceeuce cue Aire an hat ne tas 


“‘TINDAU FURIOUSLY INTERRUPTED. ‘YES, WHEN THEY HAVE GATHERED 
THEIR MILLIONS TOGETHER FROM THE HUNGER AND COLD AND NAKED- 
NESS AND RUIN AND DESPAIR OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF OTHER 


9 99 


Megetieys GIVE WORK” TO THE POOR’. ......0ceehscessecruee aes 


‘“* WITH MELA’S HELP SHE WROTE A LETTER, BANTERING BEATON ON HIS 
Be NTCUM TS HVE OR Kewirs oot oo, fo, Shine ie RU ISS kde oe TE PE Oe nee Toe ee 


‘‘PULKERSON ROSE. ‘WELL, WELL! I'VE GOT TO SEE ABOUT IT. I’M AFRAID 


bee) 


Per Orly MAN: WONT STAND IT, MARCH” “10.5 Gis sa ce eu ele ears siege sda: 
** AND FULKERSON HELPED HIM ON WITH HIS OVERCOAT ”.....ccccesecc cee 


‘** BY HEAVENS! THIS IS PILING IT UP,’ HE SAID TO HIMSELF” .......... a 


“‘sHE HELD CLASPED BETWEEN HER HANDS THE HAND OF THE DYING 


”? 
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A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 


Part Sirst. 


“ Now you think this thing over, March, and let 
me know the last of next week,” said Fulkerson. 
He got up from the chair which he had been sit- 
ting astride, with his face to its back, and tilting 
toward March on its hind legs, and came and rapped 
upon his table with his thin bamboo stick. “ What 
you want to do is to get out of the insurance busi- 
mess, anyway. You acknowledge that yourself. You 
never liked it, and now it makes you sick; in other 
words, it’s killing you. You ain’t an insurance 
man bynature. You’re a natural-born literary man ; 
and you’ve been going against the grain. Now I 
offer you a chance to go with the grain. I don’t 
Say you’re going to make your everlasting fortune, 
but Pll give you a living salary, and if the thing 
succeeds, you'll share in its success. We'll all share 
in its success. That’s the beauty of it. I tell you, 
March, this is the greatest idea that has been struck 
since’—Fulkerson stopped and searched his mind 
for a fit image—“ since the creation of man.” 

He put his leg up over the corner of March’s 
table and gave himself a sharp cut on the thigh, 
and leaned forward to get the full effect of his 
words upon his listener. 

March had his hands clasped together behind his 
head, and he took one of them down long enough to 
put his inkstand and mucilage bottle out of Fulker- 
son’s way. After many years’ experiment of a mus- 
tache and whiskers, he now wore his grizzled beard 
full, but cropped close; it gave him a certain grim- 
ness, corrected by the gentleness of his eyes. 

“Some people don’t think much of the creation 
of man, nowadays. Why stop at that? Why not 
say since the morning stars sang together ?” 

“No, sir; no, sir! I don’t want to claim too 
much, and I draw the line at the creation of man. 
I’m satisfied with that. But if you want to ring the 
morning stars into the prospectus, all right ; I won’t 
“go back on you.” 

“ But I don’t understand why you’ve set your mind 
on me,” March said. “I haven’t had any magazine 
experience ; you know that; and I haven’t seriously 
attempted to do anything in literature since I was 

1 


tb 


married. I gave up smoking and the Muse together. 
I suppose I could still manage a cigar, but I don’t 
believe I could—” 

‘““Muse worth a cent.” Fulkerson took the 
thought out of his mouth and put it into his own 
words. “I know. Well, I don’t want you to. I 
don’t care if you never write a line for the thing, 
though you needn’t reject anything of yours, if it. 
happens to be good, on that account. And I don’t 
want much experience in my editor; rather not 
have it. You told me, didn’t you, that you used to 
do some newspaper work before you settled down ?” 

“Yes; I thought my lines were permanently cast 
in those places once. It was more an accident 
than anything else that I got into the insurance 
business. I suppose I secretly hoped that if I made 
my living by something utterly different, I could 
come more freshly to literature proper in my 
leisure.” 

“JT see; and you found the insurance business 
too many for you. Well, anyway, you’ve always had 
a hankering for the ink-pots; and the fact that you 
first gave me the idea of this thing shows: that 
you’ve done more or less thinking about magazines,” 

“ Yes—less.” 

‘“Well, all right. Now don’t you be troubled. I 
know what I want, generally speaking, and in this 
particular instance I want you. I might get a man 
of more experience, but I should probably get a 
man of more prejudice and self-conceit along with 
him, and a man with a following of the literary 
hangers-on that are sure to get round an editor 
sooner or later. I want to start fair; and I’ve 
found out in the syndicate business all the men that 
are worth having. But they know me, and they 
don’t know you, and that’s where we shall have the 
pull on them. They won’t be able to work the 
thing. Don’t you be anxious about the experience. 
Tve got experience enough of my own to run a 
dozen editors. What I want is an editor who has 
taste, and you’ve got it; and conscience, and you’ve 
got it; and horse-sense, and you’ve got that. And 
I like you because you’re a Western man; and I’m 


2 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


another. Ido cotton toa Western man when I find 
him off East here, holding his own: with the best of 
em, and showing ’em that he’s just as much civil- 
tea as they are. We both know what it is to have 
our bright home in the setting sun; heigh ?” 

‘“‘T think we Western men who’ve come East are 
apt to take ourselves a little too objectively, and to 
feel ourselves rather more representative than we 
need,” March remarked. 

Fulkerson was delighted. 
do! Weare!” 

‘“‘ And as for holding my own, I’m not very proud 
of what I’ve done in that way; it’s been very little 
to hold. But I know what you mean, Fulkerson, 
and I’ve felt the same thing myself; it warmed me 
toward you when we first met. I can’t help suf- 
fusing a little to any man when I hear that he was 
born on the other side of the Alleghanies. It’s per- 
fectly stupid. I despise the same thing when I see 
it in Boston people.” 

Fulkerson pulled first one of his blond whiskers 
and then the other, and twisted the end of each 
into a point, which he left to untwine itself. He 
fixed March with his little eyes, which had a curious 
innocence in their cunning, and tapped the desk 
immediately in front of him. “ What I like about 
you is that you’re broad in your sympathies. The 
first time I saw you, that night on the Quebec boat, 
I said to myself: ‘There’s a man I want to know. 
There’s a human being.’ I was a little afraid of 
Mrs. March and the children, but I felt at home 
with you—thoroughly domesticated—before I passed 
a word with you; and when you spoke first, and 
opened up with a joke over that fellow’s tableful of 
light literature and Indian moccasins and _ birch- 
bark toy canoes and stereoscopic views, I knew that 
we were brothers—spiritual twins. I recognized the 
Western style of fun, and I thought, when you said 
you were from Boston, that it was some of the same. 
But I see now that it’s being a cold fact, as far as 
the last fifteen or twenty years count, is just so mucb 
gain. You know both sections, and you can make 
this thing go, from ocean to ocean.” 

“We might ring that into the prospectus too,” 
March suggested, with a smile. ‘‘ You might call 
the thing From Sea to Sea. By-the-way, what are 
you going to call it?” 

“T haven’t decided yet; that’s one of the things I 
wanted to talk with you about. I had thought of 
The Syndicate; but it sounds kind of dry, and it 
don’t seem to cover the ground exactly. I should 
like something that would express the co-operative 
character of the thing; but I don’t know as I can 
get it.” 

“Might call it The Mutual.” 

“They’d think it was an insurance paper. No, 
that won’t do. But Mutual comes pretty near the 
idea. If we could get something like that, it would 
pique curiosity; and then, if we could get para- 


“You've hit it! We 


graphs afloat explaining that the contributors were 
to be paid according to the sales, it would be a 
first-rate ad.” 

He bent a wide, anxious, inquiring smile upon 
March, who suggested, lazily: “You might call it 
The Round Robin. That would express the central 
idea of irresponsibility. As I understand, every- 
body is to share the profits and be exempt from the 
losses. Or, if I’m wrong, and the reverse is true, 
you might call it The Army of Martyrs. Come, 
that sounds attractive, Fulkerson! Or what do you 
think of The Fifth Wheel? That would forestall 
the criticism that there are too many literary peri- 
odicals already. Or, if you want to put forward the 
idea of complete independence, you could call it The 
Free Lance; or—” 

“Or The Hog on Ice—either stand up or fall down, 
you know,” Fulkerson broke in, coarsely. ‘ But 
we'll leave the name of the magazine till we get the 
editor. I see the poison’s beginning to work in 
you, March; and if I had time, I’d leave the result 
to time. But I haven’t. Dve got to know inside 
of the next week. To come down to business with. 
you, March, I sha’n’t start this thing unless I can 
get you to take hold of it.” 

He seemed to expect some acknowledgment, and 
March said, “ Well, that’s very nice of you, Ful- 
kerson.” 

“No, sir; no, sir! Tve always liked you, and 
wanted you, ever since we met that first night. I 
had this thing inchoately in my mind then, when I 
was telling you about the newspaper syndicate busi- 
ness—beautiful vision of a lot of literary fellows 
breaking loose from the bondage of publishers, and. 
playing it alone—” 

“You might call it Zhe ee Hand ; that would 
be attractive,” March interrupted. “The whole: 
West would know what you meant.” 

Fulkerson was talking seriously, and March was. 
listening seriously; but they both broke off and 
laughed. Fulkerson got down off the table and 
made some turns about the room. It was growing 
late; the October sun had left the top of the tall 
windows; it was still clear day, but it would soon 
be twilight; they had been talking a long time. 
Fulkerson came and stood with his little feet wide 
apart, and bent his little lean, square face on March : 
“See here! How much do you get out of this. 
thing here, anyway ?” 

“The insurance business?” March hesitated a 
moment, and then said, with a certain effort of re- 
serve, “At present about three thousand.” He 
looked up at Fulkerson with a glance, as if he had 
a mind to enlarge upon the fact, and then dropped 
his eyes without saying more. 

Whether Fulkerson had not thought it so much 
or not, he said: ‘Well, Pll give you thirty-five 
hundred. Come! And your chances in the suc- 
cess.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 3 


“We won’t count the chances in the success. 
And I don’t believe thirty-five hundred would go 
any farther in New York than three thousand in 
Boston.” 

“But you don’t live on three thousand here ?” 

“No; my wife has a little property.” 

“Well, she won’t lose the income if you go to 
New York. I suppose you pay six or seven hun- 
dred a year for your house here. You can get 
plenty of flats in New York. for the same money; 
and I understand you can get all sorts of provisions 
for less than you pay now—three or four cents on 
the pound. Come!” 

This was by no means the first talk they had had 
about the matter; every three or four months dur- 
ing the past two years the syndicate man had 
dropped in upon March to air the scheme and to 
get his impressions of it. This had happened so 
often that it had come to be a sort of joke between 
them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, 
and March had a struggle to maintain himself in a 
firm poise of refusal. 

“T dare say it wouldn’t—or it needn’t—cost so 
very much more, but I don’t want to go to New 
York; or my wife doesn’t. It’s the same thing.” 

“A good deal samer,”’ Fulkerson admitted. 

March did not quite like his candor, and he went 
on with dignity. ‘It’s very natural she shouldn’t. 
She has always lived in Boston; she’s attached to 
the place. Now, if you were going to start The Fifth 
Wheel in Boston—”’ 

Fulkerson slowly and sadly shook his head, but 
decidedly. ‘“ Wouldn’t do. You might as well say 
St. Louis or Cincinnati. There’s only one city that 
belongs to the whole country, and that’s New 
York.” 

“Yes, I know,” sighed March; ‘‘and Boston be- 
longs to the Bostonians ; but they like you to make 
yourself at home while you’re visiting.” 

“Tf you'll agree to make phrases like that, right 
along, and get them into 7’he Round Robin some- 
how, [ll say four thousand,” said Fulkerson. “You 
think it over, now, March. You talk it over with 
Mrs. March; I know you will, anyway; and I might 
as well make a virtue of advising you to doit. Tell 


her I advised you to do it, and you let me know be- 


fore next Saturday what you’ve decided.” 

March shut down the rolling top of his desk in 
the corner of the room, and walked Fulkerson out 
before him. It was so- late that the last of the 
chore-women who washed down the marble halls 
and stairs of the great building had wrung out her 
floor-cloth and departed, leaving spotless stone and 
- a clean damp smell in the darkening corridors be- 
hind her. 

“‘Couldn’t offer you such swell quarters in New 
York, March,” Fulkerson said as he went tack-tack- 
ing down the steps with his small boot heels. ‘But 
Ive got my eye on a little house round in West 


over with your wife. 


t, that I’m going to fit up for my 
bachelor’s hall in the third story, and adapt for The 
Lone Hand in the first and second, if this thing goes 
through; and I guess we’ll be pretty comfortable. 
It’s right on the Sand Strip—no malaria of any 
kind.” 

*T don’t know that I’m going to share its salu- 
brity with you yet,’ March sighed, in an obvious 
travail which gave Fulkerson hopes. 

“Oh yes, you are,” he coaxed. ‘‘ Now you talk it 
You give her a fair, unpreju- 
diced chance at the thing on its merits, and I’m very 
much mistaken in Mrs. March if she doesn’t tell you 
to go in and win. We’re bound to win!” 

They stood on the outside steps of the vast edifice . 
beetling like a granite crag above them, with the 
stone groups of an allegory of life-insurance fore- 
shortened in the bass-relief overhead. March ab- 
sently lifted his eyes to it. It was suddenly strange 
after so many years’ familiarity ; and so was the well- 
known street in its Saturday-evening solitude. He 
asked himself, with prophetic homesickness, if it 
were an omen of what was to be. But he only said, 
musingly: “A fortnightly. You know that didn’t 
work in England. The Fortnightly is’: published 
once a month now.” 

“It works in France,” Fulkerson retorted. ‘The 
Revue des Deux Mondes is still published twice a 
month. I guess we can make it work in America 
—with illustrations.” 

“Going to have illustrations ?” 

““My dear boy! What are you giving me? DoI 
look like the sort of lunatic who would start a thing 
in the twilight of the nineteenth century without 
illustrations? Come off!” 

‘Ah, that complicates it! I don’t know anything 
about art.” March’s look of discouragement con- 
fessed the hold the scheme had taken upon him. 

‘““T don’t want you to!” Fulkerson retorted. 
‘Don’t you suppose I shall have an art man ?” 

‘And will they—the artists—work at a reduced 
rate too, like the writers, with the hopes of a share 
in the success ?” 

‘““Of course they will! And if I want any par- 
ticular man, for a card, [ll pay him big money be- 
sides. But I can get plenty of first-rate sketches 
on my own terms. You'll see! They'll powr in!” 

“Look here, Fulkerson,” said March, “‘ you’d bet- 
ter call this fortnightly of yours The Madness of the 
Half Moon; or Bedlam Broke Loose wouldn’t be 
bad! Why do you throw away all your hard earn- 
ings on such a crazy venture? Don’t doit!” The 
kindness which March had always felt, in spite of 
his wife’s first misgivings and reservations, for the 
merry, hopeful, slangy, energetic little creature trem- 
bled in his voice. They had both formed a friend- 
ship for Fulkerson during the week they were 
together in Quebec. When he was not working the 
newspapers there, he went about with them over 


Eleventh Str et 


4 A Hazard of 


the familiar ground they were showing their chil- 
dren, and was simply grateful for the chance, as 
well as very entertaining about it all. The children 
liked him too; when they got the clew to his inten- 
tion, and found that he was not quite serious in 
many of the things he said, they thought he was 
great fun. They were always glad when their 
father brought him home on the occasion of Fulker- 
son’s visits to Boston; and Mrs. March, though of 
a charier hospitality, welcomed Fulkerson with a 
grateful sense of his admiration for her husband. 
He had a way of treating March with deference, as 
an older and abler man, and of qualifying the free- 
dom he used toward every one with an implica- 
tion that March tolerated it voluntarily, which she 
thought very sweet, and even refined. 

“Ah, now you’re talking like a man and a bro- 
ther !” said Fulkerson. ‘‘ Why, March, old man, do 
you suppose I’d come on here and try to talk you 
into this thing if I wasn’t morally, if I wasn’t per- 
fectly, swre of success? There isn’t any if or and 
about it. I know my ground, every inch; and I 
don’t stand alone on it,” he added, with a signifi- 
cance which did not escape March. ‘‘ When you’ve 


New Fortunes. 


made up your mind, I can give you the proof; but 
I’m not at liberty now-to say anything more. [I tell 
you it’s going to be a triumphal march from the 
word go, with coffee and lemonade for the proces- 
sion along the whole line. All you’ve got to do is 
to fall in.” He stretched out his hand to March. 
“You let me know as soon as you can.” 

March deferred taking his hand till he could ask, 
“Where are you going ?” 

“Parker House. Take the half past ten for New 
York to-night.” 

“JT thought I might walk your way.” March 
looked at his watch. ‘But I shouldn’t have time. 
Good-by !” 

He now let Fulkerson have his hand, and they 
exchanged a cordial pressure. Fulkerson started 
off at a quick, light pace. Half a block away he 
stopped, turned round, and seeing March still stand- 
ing where he had left him, he called back, joyously, 
“Tve got the name !” 

“What ?” 

“ Huery Other Week.” 

“Tt isn’t bad.” 

“Ta-ta !” 


Il. 


Au. the way up to the South End, March pro- 
longed his talk with Fulkerson, and at his door in 
Nankeen Square he closed the parley with a plump 
refusal to go to New York on any terms. His 
daughter Bella was lying in wait for him in the 
hall, and she threw her arms round his neck with 
the exuberance of her fourteen years, and with 
something of the histrionic intention of her sex. 
He pressed on, with her clinging about him, to the 
library, and, in the glow of his decision against 
Fulkerson, kissed jhis wife, where she sat by the 
study lamp reading the Zranscript through her first 
pair of eye-glasses: it was agreed in the family 
that she looked distinguished in them, or at any 
rate cultivated. She took them off to give him 
a glance of question, and their son Tom looked 
up from his book for a moment: he was in his 
last year at the high-school, and was preparing for 
Harvard. 

“J didn’t get away from the office till half past 
five,” March explained to his wife’s glance, “and 
then I walked. I suppose dinner’s waiting. I’m 
sorry, but I won’t do it any more.” 

At table he tried to be gay with Bella, who bab- 
bled at him with a voluble pertness, which her 
brother had often advised her parents to check 
in her, unless they wanted her to be universally 
despised. 

‘“‘Papa,” she shouted at last, “you’re not listen- 
ing !” 

As soon as possible his wife told the children 


they might be excused. Then she asked, “‘ What is 
it, Basil ?” 

‘““What is what?” he retorted, with a specious 
brightness that did not avail. 

“What is on your mind ?”’ 

‘How do you know there’s anything ?” 

“Your kissing me so when you came in, for one 
thing.” 

‘Don’t I always kiss you when I come in ?” 

“Notnow. I suppose it isn’t necessary any more. 
Cela va sans baiser.” 

“Yes, I guess it’s so; we get along without the 
symbolism now.” He stopped, but she knew that 
he had not finished. 

“Js it about your business? Have they done any- 
thing more ?” 

“No; Pm stillin the dark. I don’t know wheth- 
er they mean to supplant me, or whether they ever 
did. But I wasn’t thinking about that. Fulkerson 
has been to see me again.” 

“Fulkerson?” She brightened at the name, and 
March smiled too. “Why didn’t you bring him to 
dinner ?” 

“J wanted to talk with you. Then you do like 
him ?” 

“What has that got to do with it, Basil!” 

“Nothing! nothing! That is, he was boring away 
about that scheme of his again. He’s got it into 
definite shape at last.” 

“What shape ?” 

March outlined it for her, and his wife seized its 


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A Hazard of New Fortunes. 5 


main features with the intuitive sense of affairs 
which makes women such good business-men when 
they will let it. 

“Tt sounds perfectly crazy,” she said, finally. 
“But it mayn’t be. The only thing I didn’t like 
about Mr. Fulkerson was his always wanting to 
chance things. But what have you got to do with 
At, 9”) 3 4 

“What have I got to do with it?” March toyed 
with the delay the question gave him ; then he said, 
with a sort of deprecatory laugh, “It seems that 
Fulkerson has had his eye on me ever since we met 
that night on the Quebec boat. I opened up pretty 
freely to him, as you do to a man you never expect 
to see again, and when I found he was in that 
newspaper syndicate business, I told him about my 
early literary ambitions—” 

“You can’t say that J ever discouraged them, 
Basil,” his wife putin. ‘I should have been will- 
ing, any time, to give up everything for them.” 

“Well, he says that I first suggested this brilliant 
idea to him. Perhaps I did; I don’t remember. 
When he told me about his supplying literature to 
newspapers for simultaneous publication, he says I 
asked, ‘Why not apply the principle of co-operation 
to a magazine, and run it in the interest of the con- 
tributors?? and that set him to thinking, and he 
thought out his plan of a periodical which should 
pay authors and artists a low price outright for their 

work, and give them a chance of the profits in the 
way of a percentage. After all, it isn’t so very dif- 
ferent from the chances an author takes when he 
publishes a book. And Fulkerson thinks that the 
novelty of the thing would pique public curiosity, if 
it didn’t arouse public sympathy. And the long and 
short of it is, Isabel, that he wants me to help edit it.” 

“To edit it?” His wife caught her breath, and 
she took a little time to realize the fact, while she 
stared hard at her husband to make sure he was 
not joking. 

“Yes, He says he owes it all to me; that I 
invented the idea—the germ—the microbe.” 

His wife had now realized the fact, at least in a 
degree that excluded trifling with it. “ That is very 
honorable of Mr. Fulkerson; and if he owes it to 
you, it was the least he could do.” Having recog- 
nized her husband’s claim to the honor done him, 
she began to kindle with a sense of the honor itself, 
and the value of the opportunity. ‘It’s a very 
high compliment to you, Basil; a very high compli- 
ment. And you could give up this wretched insur- 
ance business that you’ve always hated so, and that’s 
making you so unhappy now that you think they’re 
going to take it from you. Give it up, and take 
Mr. Fulkerson’s offer! It’s a perfect interposition, 
coming just at this time! Why, do it! Mercy!” 
she suddenly arrested herself, ‘““he wouldn’t expect 
you to get along on the possible profits?” Her 
face expressed the awfulness of the notion. 


March smiled reassuringly, and waited to give 
himself the pleasure of the sensation he meant to 
give her. ‘If Pll make striking phrases for it and 
edit it too, he’ll give me four thousand dollars.” 

He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his hands 
deep into his pockets, and watched his wife’s face, 
luminous with the emotions that flashed through 
her mind—doubt, joy, anxiety. 

“Basil! You don’t mean it! Why, takeit! Take 
it instantly! Oh, what a thing to happen! QA, 
what luck! But you deserve it, if you first sug- 
gested it. What an escape, what a triumph over 
all those hateful insurance people! Oh, Basil, ’m 
afraid he’ll change his mind! You ought to have 
accepted on the spot. You might have known I 
would approve, and you could so easily have taken 
it back if I didn’t... Telegraph him now! Run right 
out with the despatch! Or we can send Tom!” 

In these imperatives of Mrs. March’s there was 
always much of the conditional. She meant that 
he should do what she said, if it were entirely right ; 
and she never meant to be considered as having 
urged him. | 

‘“‘And suppose his enterprise went wrong ?” her 
husband suggested. | 

“Tt won’t go wrong. Hasn’t he made a success 
of his syndicate ?” 

‘He says so—yes.” 

“Very well; then it stands to reason that he’ll 
succeed in this, too. He wouldn’t undertake it if 
he didn’t know it would succeed; he must have 
capital.” 

‘Tt will take a great deal to get such a thing go- 
ing; and even if he’s got an Angel behind him—” 

She caught at the words: “ An Angel ?” 

“It’s what the theatrical people call a financial 
backer. He dropped a hint of something of that 
kind.” 

“Of course he’s got an Angel,” said his wife, 
promptly adopting the word. ‘And even if he 
hadn’t, still, Basil, I should be willing to have you 
risk it. The risk isn’t so great, is it? We shouldn’t 
be ruined if it failed altogether. With our stocks 
we have two thousand a year, anyway, and we could 
pinch through on that till you got into some other 
business afterward, especially if we’d saved some- 
thing out of your salary while it lasted. Basil, I 
want you to try it! I know it will give you a new 
lease of life to have a congenial occupation.” March 
laughed, but his wife persisted. ‘I’m all for your 
trying it, Basil; indeed, I am. If it’s an experi- 
ment, you can give it up.” 

“Tt can give me up, too.” 

‘*Oh, nonsense! I guess there’s not much fear 
of that. Now I want you to telegraph to Mr. Ful- 
kerson, so that he’ll find the despatch waiting for 
him when he gets to New York. I'll take the 
whole responsibility, Basil, and Ill risk all the 
consequences.” 


ale 
as = 


6 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Il. 


Maron’s face had sobered more and more as she 
followed one hopeful burst with another, and now 
it expressed a positive pain. But he forced a smile, 


and said: ‘‘ There’s a little condition attached. 


Where did you suppose it was to be published ?” 

‘Why, in Boston, of course. Where else should 
it be published ?” 

She looked at him for the intention of his ques- 
tion so searchingly that he quite gave up the at- 
tempt to be gay about it. ‘“‘ No,” he said, gravely; 
“it?s to be published in New York.” 

She fell back in her chair. “In New York?” 
She leaned forward over the table toward him, as if 
to make sure that she heard aright, and said, with 
all the keen reproach that he could have expected: 
‘In New York, Basil! Oh, how could you have let 
me go on?” 

He had a sufficiently rueful face in owning, “TI 
oughtn’t to have done it, but I got started wrong. 
I couldn’t help putting the best foot forward at first 
—or as long as the whole thing was in the air. I 
didn’t know that you would take so much to the 
general enterprise, or else I should have mentioned 
the New York condition at once; but of course that 
puts an end to it.” 

“Oh, of course,’ she assented, sadly. 
couldn't go to New York.” 

“No, I know that,” he said; and with this a per- 
verse desire to tempt her to the impossibility awoke 
in him, though he was really quite cold about the 
affair himself now. “Fulkerson thought we could 
get a nice flat in New York for about what the in- 
terest and taxes come to here, and provisions are 
cheaper. But I should rather not experiment at 
my time of life. If I could have been caught 
younger, I might have been inured to New York, 
but I don’t believe I could stand it now.” 

“How I hate to have you talk that way, Basil! 
You are young enough to try anything—anywhere ; 
but you know I don’t like New York. I don’t 
approve of it. It’s so 67g, and so hideous! Of 
course I shouldn’t mind that ; but I’ve always lived 
in Boston, and the children were born and have all 
their friendships and associations here.” She add- 
ed, with the helplessness that discredited her good 
sense and did her injustice, “I have just got them 
both into the Friday afternoon class at Papanti’s, 
and you know how difficult that is.” 

March could not fail to take advantage of an 
occasion like this. ‘ Well, that alone ought to 
settle it. Under the circumstances it would be fly- 
ing in the face of Providence to leave Boston. The 
mere fact of a brilliant opening like that offered me 
on The Microbe, and the halcyon future which Ful- 
kerson promises if we’ll come to New York, is as 


“We 


dust in the balance against the advantages of the 
Friday afternoon class.” 

“ Basil,” she appealed, solemnly, “ have I ever in- 
terfered with your career ?” 

““T never had any for you to interfere with, my 
dear.” 

“ Basil! Haven’t I always had faith in you? 
And don’t you suppose that if I thought it would 
really be for your advancement, I would go to New 
York or anywhere with you?” 

“No, my dear, I don’t,” he teased. “If it would 
be for my salvation, yes, perhaps; but not short of 
that; and I should have to prove by a cloud of 
witnesses that it would. I don’t blame you. I 
wasn’t born in Boston, but I understand how you 
feel, And really, my dear,” he added, without irony, 
“T never seriously thought of asking you to go to 
New York. I was dazzled by Fulkerson’s offer, I’ll 
own that; but his choice of me as editor sapped 
my confidence in him.” 

“‘T don’t like to hear you say that, Basil,” she 
entreated. 

“Well, of course there were mitigating circum- 
stances. I could see that Fulkerson meant to keep 
the whip-hand himself, and that was reassuring. 
And besides, if the Reciprocity Life should happen 
not to want my services any longer, it wouldn’t be 
quite like giving up a certainty ; though, as a matter 
of business, I let Fulkerson get that impression ; I 
felt rather sneaking to do it. But if the worst 
comes to the worst, I can look about for something 
to do in Boston; and, anyhow, people don’t starve 
on two thousand a year, though it’s convenient to 
have five. The fact is, ’m too old to change so 
radically. If you don’t like my saying that, then 
you are, Isabel, and so are the children. I’ve no 
right to take them from the home we’ve made, and 
to change the whole course of their lives, unless I 
can assure them of something, and I can’t assure 
them of anything. Boston is big enough for us, and 
it’s certainly prettier than New York. I always 
feel a little proud of hailing from Boston; my plea- 
sure in the place mounts the farther I get away 
from it. But I do appreciate it, my dear. I’ve no 
more desire to leave it than you have. You may be 
sure that if you don’t want to take the children out 
of the Friday afternoon class, I don’t want to leave 
my library here, and all the ways I’ve got set in. 
We'll keep on. Very likely the company won’t 
supplant me; and if it does, and Matkins gets the 
place, he’ll give me a subordinate position of some 
sort. Cheer up, Isabel! I have put Satan and his 
angel, Fulkerson, behind me, and it’s all right. Let’s 
go in to the children.” 

He came round the table to Isabel, where she sat 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. ? 


in a growing distraction, and lifted her by the waist 
from her chair. 

She sighed deeply. 
about it?” 

“No. What’s the use, now ?” 

“There wouldn’t be any,” she assented. When 
they entered the family room, where the boy and 
girl sat on either side of the lamp working out the 
lessons for Monday which they had left over from 
the day before,-she asked, ‘Children, how would 
you like to live in New York?” 


‘Shall we tell the children 


Bella made haste to get in her word first. ‘And — 
give up the Friday afternoon class?” she wailed. 

Tom growled from his book, without lifting his 
eyes: “I shouldn’t want to go to Columbia. They 
hayven’t got any dormitories, and you have to board 
round anywhere. Are you going to New York?” 
He now deigned to look up at his father. 

“No, Tom. You and Bella have decided me 
against it. Your perspective shows the affair in its 
true proportions. I had an offer to go to New 
York, but I shall refuse it.” 


DG 


Maron’s irony fell harmless from the children’s 
preoccupation with their own affairs, but he knew 
that his wife felt it, and this added to the bitterness 
which prompted it. He blamed her for letting her 
provincial narrowness prevent his accepting Ful- 
kerson’s offer quite as much as if he had otherwise 
entirely wished to accept it. His world, like most 
worlds, had been superficially a disappointment. He 
was no richer than at the beginning, though in mar- 
rying he had given up some tastes, some preferences, 
some aspirations, in the hope of indulging them 
later, with larger means and larger leisure. His 
wife had not urged him to do it; in fact, her pride, 
as she said, was in his fitness for the life he had 
renounced; but she had acquiesced, and they had 
been very happy together. That is to say, they 
made up their quarrels or ignored them. 

They often accused each other of being selfish 
and indifferent, but she knew that he would always 
sacrifice himself for her and the children; and he, 
on his part, with many gibes and mockeries, wholly 
trusted in her. They had grown practically tolerant 
of each other’s disagreeable traits ; and the danger 
that really threatened them was that they should 
grow too well satisfied with themselves, if not with 
each other. They were not sentimental, they were 
rather matter-of-fact in their motives; but they had 
both a sort of humorous fondness for sentimentality. 
They liked to play with the romantic, from the safe 
vantage-ground of their real practicality, and to 
divine the poetry of the commonplace. Their pe- 
culiar point of view separated them from most other 
people, with whom their means of self-comparison 
were not so good since their marriage as before. 
‘Then they had travelled and seen much of the world, 
and they had formed tastes which they had not 
always been able to indulge, but of which they felt 
that the possession reflected distinction on them. 
It enabled them to look down upon those who were 
without such tastes; but they were not ill-natured, 
and so they did not look down so much with con- 
tempt as with amusement. In their unfashionable 

neighdorhood they had the fame of being not ex- 


clusive precisely, but very much wrapt up in them- 
selves and their children. 

Mrs. March was reputed to be very cultivated, and 
Mr. March even more so, among the simpler folk 
around them. Their house had some good pictures, 
which her aunt had brought home from Europe in 
more affluent days, and it abounded in books on 
which he spent more than he ought. They had 
beautified it in every way, and had unconsciously 
taken credit to themselves for it. They felt, with 
a glow almost of virtue, how perfectly it fitted their 
lives and their children’s,.and they believed that 
somehow it expressed their characters—that it was 
like them. They went out very little; she remained 
shut up in its refinement, working the good of her 
own ; and he went to his business, and hurried back 
to forget it, and dream his dream of intellectual 
achievement in the flattering atmosphere of her sym- 
pathy. He could not conceal from himself that his 
divided life was somewhat like Charles Lamb’s, and 
there were times when, as he had expressed to 
Fulkerson, he believed that its division was favor- 
able to the freshness of his interest in literature. 
It certainly kept it a high privilege, a sacred refuge. 
Now and then he wrote something, and got it printed 
after long delays, and when they met on the St. 
Lawrence, Fulkerson had some of March’s verses in 
his pocket-book, which he had cut out of a stray 
newspaper and carried about for years, because they 
pleased his fancy so much; they formed an imme- 
diate bond of union between the men when their 
authorship was traced and owned, and this gave a 
pretty color of romance to their acquaintance. But, 
for the most part, March was satisfied to read. He 
was proud of reading critically, and he kept in the 
current of literary interests and controversies. It 
all seemed to him, and to his wife at second-hand, 
very meritorious ; he could not help contrasting his 
life and its inner elegance with that of other men 
who had no such resources. He thought that he 
was not arrogant about it, because he did full justice 
to the good qualities of those other people; he con- 
gratulated himself upon the democratic instincts 


8 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


which enabled him to do this; and neither he nor 
his wife supposed that they were selfish persons. 
On the contrary, they were very sympathetic; there 
was no good cause that they did not wish well; they 
had a generous scorn of all kinds of narrow-heart- 
edness; if it had ever come into their way to sacri- 
fice themselves for others, they thought they would 
have done so, but they never asked why it had not 
come in their way. They were very gentle and kind, 
even when most elusive; and they taught their 
children to loathe all manner of social cruelty. 
March was of so watchful a conscience in some 
respects that he denied himself the pensive pleasure 
of lapsing into the melancholy of unfulfilled aspira- 
tions; but he did not see that if he had abandoned 
them, it had been for what he held dearer; gener- 
ally he felt as if he had turned from them with a 
high altruistic aim. The practical expression of 
his life was that it was enough to provide well for 
his family; to have cultivated tastes, and to gratify 
them to the extent of his means; to be rather dis- 
tinguished, even in the simplification of his desires. 
He believed, and his wife believed, that if the time 
ever came when he really wished to make a sacrifice 
to the fulfilment of the aspirations so long post- 
poned, she would be ready to join him heart and 
hand, 

When he went to her room from his library, where 
she left him the whole evening with the children, he 
found her before the glass thoughtfully removing 
the first dismantling pin from her back hair. 

“T can’t help feeling,” she grieved into the mir- 
ror, ‘that it’s I who keep you from accepting that 
offer. I know itis! I could go West with you, or 
into a new country—anywhere; but New York ter- 
rifies me. I don’t like New York; I never did; 
it disheartens and distracts me; I can’t find myself 
in it; I shouldn’t know how to shop. I know I’m 
foolish and narrow and provincial,” she went on; 
“but I could never have any inner quiet in New 
York; I couldn’t live in the spirit there. I suppose 
people do. It can’t be that all those millions—” 

“Oh, not so bad as that!” March interposed, 
laughing. ‘There aren’t quite two.” 

“J thought there were four or five. Well, no 
matter. You see what I am, Basil. I’m terribly 
limited. I couldn’t make my sympathies go round 
two million people; I should be wretched. I sup- 
pose I’m standing in the way of your highest inter- 
est, but I can’t help it. We took each other for bet- 
ter or worse, and you must try to bear with me—” 
She broke off and began to cry. 

“ Stop it!” shouted March. “T tell you I never 
cared anything for Fulkerson’s scheme, or entertain- 
ed it seriously,and I shouldn’t if he’d proposed to 
carry it out in Boston.” This was not quite true; 
but in the retrospect it seemed sufficiently so for 
the purposes of argument. ‘Don’t say another 
word about it. The thing’s over now, and I don’t 


want to think of it any more. We couldn’t change: 
its nature if we talked all night. But I want you to: 
understand that it isn’t your limitations that are in 
the way. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have the courage 
to take such a place; I don’t think I’m fit for it; 
and that’s the long and short of it.” 

‘Oh, you don’t know how it hurts me to have you. 
say that, Basil.” 


The next morning, as they sat together at break- 
fast, without the children, whom they let lie late on: 
Sunday, Mrs. March said to her husband, silent over 
his fish-balls and baked beans: “‘ We will go to New 
York. Ive decided it.” 

““ Well, it takes two to decide that,” March retort- 
ed. “We are not going to New York.” 

“Yes, weare. Ive thought it out. Now listen.’” 

“Oh, I’m willing to listen,” he consented, airily. 

“You’ve always wanted to get out of the in- 
surance business, and now with that fear of being 
turned out which you have, you mustn’t neglect this 
offer. I suppose it has its risks, but it’s a risk 
keeping on as we are; and perhaps you will make 
a great success of it. I do want you to try, Basil. 
If I could once feel that you had fairly seen what: 
you could do in literature, I should die happy.” 

“Not immediately after, I hope,” he suggested,. 
taking the second cup of coffee she had been pour- 
ing out for him. ‘And Boston ?” 

‘““We needn’t make a complete break. We can: 
keep this place for the present, anyway; we could 
let it for the winter, and come back in the summer- 
next year. It would be change enough from New 
York.” 

‘Fulkerson and I hadn’t got as far as to talk of 
a vacation.” 

“No matter. The children and I could come. 
And if you didn’t like New York, or the enterprise: 
failed, you could get into something in Boston again ; 
and we have enough to live on till you did. Yes, 
Basil, ’'m going.” 

“T can see by the way your chin trembles that 
nothing could stop you. Yow may go to New York if 
you wish, Isabel, but I shall stay here.” 

“ Be serious, Basil! I’m in earnest.” 

“Serious? If I were any more serious I should 
shed tears. Come, my dear, I know what you mean, 
and if I had my heart set on this thing—Fulkerson. 
always calls it ‘this thing’—I would cheerfully ac- 
cept any sacrifice you could make to it. But I'd. 
rather not offer you up on a shrine I don’t feel any 
particular faith in. I’m very comfortable where I 
am; that is, I know just where the pinch comes, 
and if it comes harder, why, I’ve got used to bearing” 
that kind of pinch. I’m too old to change pinches.” 

“‘ Now that does decide me.” 

“Tt decides me too.” 

‘“‘T will take all the responsibility, Basil,” she 
pleaded. 


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A Hazard of New Fortunes. 9 


“Oh yes; but you'll hand it back to me as soon 
as you’ve carried your point with it. There’s no- 
thing mean about you, Isabel, where responsibility 
is concerned. No; if I do this thing—Fulkerson 
again! I can’t get away from ‘this thing’; it’s 
ominous—I must do it because I want to do it, and 
not because you wish that you wanted me to do it. 
I understand your position, Isabel, and that you’re 
really acting from-a generous impulse, but there’s 
nothing so precarious at our time of life as a gen- 
erous impulse. When we were younger we could 
stand it; we could give way to it and take the con- 
sequences. But now we can’t bear it. We must 
act from cold reason even in the ardor of self-sacri- 
fice,” 

“Oh, as if you did that!” his wife retorted. 

“Is that any cause why you shouldn’t?” She 
could not say that it was, and he went on trium- 
phantly: “No, I won’t take you away from the 
only safe place on the planet, and plunge you into 
the most perilous, and then have you say in your re- 
vulsion of feeling that you were all against it from 
the first, and you gave way because you saw I had 
my heart set on it.” He supposed he was treating 
the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter 
vetween husband and wife there is always much 
more than the joking. March had seen some pretty 
feminine inconsistencies and trepidations which 
once charmed him in his wife hardening into traits 
of middle age, which were very like those of less 
interesting elder women. The sight moved him 
with a kind of pathos, but he felt the result hinder- 
ing and vexatious. 

She now retorted that if he did not choose to 
take her at her word he need not, but that whatever 
he did she should have nothing to reproach herself 


His wife made no attempt to renew their talk 
before March went to his business in the morning, 
and they parted in dry offence. Their experience 
was that these things always came right of them- 
selves at last, and they usually let them. He knew 
that she had really tried to consent to a thing that 
was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave her 
more credit for the effort than he had allowed her 
openly. She knew that she had made it with the 
reservation he accused her of, and that he had a 
right to feel sore at what she could not help. But 
he left her to brood over his ingratitude, and she 
suffered him to go heavy and unfriended to meet 
the chances of the day. He said to himself that 
if she had assented cordially to the conditions of 
Fulkerson’s offer, he would have had the courage to 
take all the other risks himself, and would have 
had the satisfaction of resigning his place. As it 
was, he must wait till he was removed; and he fig- 


id 


with ; and, at least, he could not say that she had 
trapped him into anything. 

“What do you mean by trapping ?” he demanded. 

‘‘T don’t know what you call it,” she answered ; 
‘‘but when you get me to commit myself toa thing by 
leaving out the most essential point, J call it trap- 
ping.” 

“‘T wonder you stop at trapping, if you think I got 

you to favor Fulkerson’s scheme and then sprung 
New York on you. I don’t suppose you do, though. 
But I guess we won’t talk about it any more.” 
' He went out for a long walk, and she went to 
her room. They lunched silently together in the 
presence of their children, who knew that they had 
been quarrelling, but were easily indifferent to the 
fact, as children get to be in such cases; nature de- 
fends their youth, and the unhappiness which they 
behold does not infect them. In the evening, after 
the boy and girl had gone to bed, the father and 
mother resumed their talk. He would have liked 
to take it up at the point from which it wandered 
into hostilities, for he felt it lamentable that a 
matter which so seriously concerned them should be 
confused in 'the fumes of senseless anger; and he 
was willing to make a tacit acknowledgment of his 
own error by recurring to the question, but she 
would not be content with this, and he had to con- 
cede explicitly to her weakness that she really 
meant it when she had asked him to accept Ful- 
kerson’s offer. He said he knew that; and he be- 
gan soberly to talk over their prospects in the 
event of their going to New York. 

““Oh, I see you are going !”’ she twitted. 

“Tm going to stay,” he answered, “and let them 
turn me out of my agency here!” and in this bit- 
terness their talk ended. 


ured with bitter pleasure the pain she would feel 
when he came home some day and told her he had 
been supplanted, after it was too late to close with 
Fulkerson. 

He found a letter on his desk from the secre- 
tary, ‘‘Dictated,” in type-writing, which briefly in- 
formed him that Mr. Hubbell, the Inspector of 
Agencies, would be in Boston on Wednesday, and 
would call at his office during the forenoon. The 
letter was not different in tone from many that he 
had already received; but the visit announced was. 
out of the usual order, and March believed he read 
his fate in it. During the eighteen years of his con- 
nection with it—first as a subordinate in the Boston 
office, and finally as its general agent there—he 
had seen a good many changes in the Reciprocity; 
presidents, vice - presidents, actuaries, and general 
agents had come and gone, but there had always 
seemed to be a recognition of his efficiency, or at 


* 


10 


least sufficiency, and there had never been any man- 
ner of trouble, no question of accounts, no appar- 
ent dissatisfaction with his management, until lat- 
terly, when there had begun to come from head- 
quarters some suggestions of enterprise in certain 
ways, which gave him his first suspicions of his clerk 
Matkins’s willingness to succeed him: they em- 
bodied some of Matkins’s ideas. The things pro- 
posedseemed to March undignified, and even vulgar ; 
he had never thought himself wanting in energy, 
though probably he had left the business to take its 
own course in the old lines more than he realized. 
Things had always gone so smoothly that he had 
sometimes fancied a peculiar regard for him in the 
management, which he had the weakness to attri- 
bute to an appreciation of what he occasionally did 
in literature, though in saner moments he felt how 
impossible this was. Beyond a reference from Mr. 
Hubbell to some piece of March’s, which had hap- 
pened to meet his eye, no one in the management 
ever gave a sign of consciousness that their ser- 
vice was adorned by an obscure literary man; and 
Mr. Hubbell himself had the effect of regarding 
the excursions of March’s pen as a sort of joke, 
and of winking at them, as he might have winked 
if once in a way he had found him a little the gayer 
for dining. 

March wore through the day gloomily, but he 
had it on his conscience not to show any resentment 
toward Matkins, whom he suspected of wishing to 
supplant him, and even of working to do so. 
Through this self-denial he reached a better mind 
concerning his wife. He determined not to make 

her suffer needlessly, if the worst came to the worst; 
she would suffer enough, at the best, and till the 
worst came he would spare her, and not say any- 
thing about the letter he had got. 

But when they met, her first glance divined that 
something had happened, and her first question 
frustrated his generous intention. He had to tell 
“her about the letter. She would not allow that it 
had any significance; but she wished him to make 
an end of his anxieties, and forestall whatever it 
might portend, by resigning his place at once. She 
said she was quite ready to go to New York; she 
had been thinking it all over, and now she really 
wanted to go. He answered, soberly, that he had 
thought it over too, and he did not wish to leave 


ak Boston, where he had lived so long, or try a new way 


+ 


ba 


of life if he could help it. He insisted that he was 
» quite selfish in this. In their concessions their 
quarrel vanished; they agreed that whatever hap- 
pened would be for the best; and the next day he 
went to his office fortified for any event. 

His destiny, if tragical, presented itself with an 
aspect which he might have found comic if it 
had been another’s destiny. Mr. Hubbell brought 
-March’s removal, softened in the guise of a pro- 
motion. The management at New York, it ap- 


ly ye 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


peared, had acted upon a suggestion of Mr. Hub- 
bell’s, and now authorized him to offer March the 
editorship of the monthly paper published in the 
interest of the company; his office would include 
the authorship of circulars and leaflets in behalf of 
life-insurance, and would give play to the literary 
talent which Mr. Hubbell had brought to the atten- 
tion of the management; his salary would be nearly 
as much as at present, but the work would not 
take his whole time, and in a place like New York 
he could get a great deal of outside writing, which 
they would not object to his doing. 

Mr. Hubbell seemed so sure of his acceptance 
of a place in every way congenial to a man of 
literary tastes that March was afterward sorry he 
dismissed the proposition with obvious irony, and 
had needlessly hurt Hubbell’s feelings; but Mrs. 
March had no such regrets. She was only afraid 
that he had not made his rejection contemptuous 
enough. ‘“ And now,” she said, “telegraph Mr. Ful- 
kerson, and we will go at once.” 

‘“‘T suppose I could still get Matkins’s former 
place,” March suggested. 

“‘Never !” she retorted. “Telegraph instantly!” 

They were only afraid now that Fulkerson might 
have changed his mind, and they had a wretched 
day in which they heard nothing from him. It end- 
ed with his answering March’s telegram in person. 
They were so glad of his coming, and so touched 
by his satisfaction with his bargain, that they laid 
all the facts of the case before him. He entered 
fully into March’s sense of the joke latent in Mr. 
Hubbell’s proposition, and he tried to make Mrs. 
March believe that he shared her resentment of 


‘the indignity offered her husband. 


March made a show of willingness to release him 
in view of the changed situation, saying that he 
held him to nothing. Fulkerson laughed, and asked 
him how soon he thought he could come on to New 
York. He refused to reopen the question of March’s 
fitness with him; he said they had gone into that 
thoroughly; but he recurred to it with Mrs. March, 
and confirmed her belief in his good sense on all 
points. She had been from the first moment de- 
fiantly confident of her husband’s ability, but till she 
had talked the matter over with Fulkerson, she was 
secretly not sure of it; or, at least, she was not sure 
that March was not right in distrusting himself. 
When she clearly understood, now, what Fulkerson 
intended, she had no longer a doubt. He ex- 
plained how the enterprise differed from others, and 
how he needed for its direction a man who combined 
general business experience and business ideas with 
a love for the thing and a natural aptness for it. 
He did not want a young man, and yet he wanted 
youth—its freshness, its zest—such as March would 
feel in a thing he could put his whole heart into. 
He would not run in ruts, like an old fellow who had 
got hackneyed; he would not have any hobbies; 


A Hazard of New fortunes. 11 


he would not have any friends nor any enemies. 


Besides, he would have to meet people, and March 


was a man that people took to; she knew that 
herself; he had a kind of charm. The editorial 
management was going to be kept in the back- 
ground, as far as the public was concerned; the 
public was to suppose that the thing ran itself. 
Fulkerson did not care for a great literary reputation 
in his editor—he implied that March had a very 
pretty little one. -At the same time the relations 
between the contributors and the management were 
to be much more intimate than usual. Fulkerson 
felt his personal disqualification for working the 
thing socially, and he counted upon Mr, March for 
that; that was to say, he counted upon Mrs. March. 

She protested he must not count upon her; but it 
by no means disabled Fulkerson’s judgment in her 
view that March really seemed more than anything 
else a fancy of his. He had been a fancy of.hers ; 
and the sort of affectionate respect with which Ful- 


kerson spoke of him laid forever some doubt she 
had of the fineness of Fulkerson’s manners, and 
reconciled her to the graphic slanginess of his 


. speech. 


The affair was now irretrievable, but she gave 
her approval to it as superbly as if it were submit- 
ted in its inception. Only, Mr. Fulkerson must not 
suppose she should ever like New York. She 
would not deceive him on that point. She never 
should like it. She did not conceal, either, that she 
did not like taking the children out of the Friday 
evening class; and she did not believe that Tom 
would ever be reconciled to going to Columbia. 
She took courage from Fulkerson’s suggestion that 
it was possible for Tom to come to Harvard even 
from New York; and she heaped him with ques- 
tions concerning the domiciliation of the family in 
that city. He tried to know something about the 
matter, and he succeeded in seeming interested in 
points necessarily indifferent to him. 


VI. 


In the uprooting and transplanting of their home 
that followed, Mrs. March often trembled before dis- 
tant problems and possible contingencies, but she 
was never troubled by present difficulties. She 
kept up with tireless energy, and in the moments of 
dejection and misgiving which harassed her hus- 
band she remained dauntless, and put heart into 
him when he had lost it altogether, 

She arranged to leave the children in the house 
with the servants, while she went on with March to 
look up a dwelling of some sort in New York. It 
made him sick to think of it; and when it came 
to the point, he would rather have given up the 
whole enterprise. She had to nerve him to it, to 
represent more than once that now they had no 
choice but to make this experiment. Every de- 
tail of parting was anguish to him. He got conso- 
lation out of the notion of letting the house fur- 
nished for the winter; that implied their return to 
it; but it cost him pangs of the keenest misery to 
advertise it; and when a tenant was actually found, 
it was all he could do to give him the lease. He 
tried his wife’s love and patience as a man must to 
whom the future is easy in the mass, but terrible 
as it translates itself piecemeal into the present. 
He experienced remorse in the presence of inani- 
mate things he was going to leave as if they had 
sensibly reproached him, and an anticipative home- 
sickness that seemed to stop his heart. Again and 
again his wife had to make him reflect that his 
depression was not prophetic. She convinced him 
of what he already knew, and persuaded him 
against his knowledge that he could be keeping an 
eye out for something to take hold of in Boston 


- 


if they could not stand New York. She ended 
by telling him that it was too bad to make her com- 
fort him in a trial that was really so much more a 
trial to her. She had to support him in a last ac- 
cess of despair on their way to the Albany depot 
the morning they started to New York; but when 
the final details had been dealt with, the tickets 
bougut, the trunks checked, and the hand-bags hung 


up in their car, and the future had massed itself ;, 


again at a safe distance and was seven hours and 
two hundred miles away, his spirits began to rise 
and hers to sink. He would have been willing to 
celebrate the ‘taste, the domestic refinement of the 
ladies’ waiting-room in the depot, where they had 
spent a quarter of an hour before the train started. 
He said he did not believe there was another station 
in the world where mahogany rocking-chairs were 
provided; that the dull red warmth of the walls 
was as cozy as an evening lamp, and that he always 


hoped to see a fire kindled on that vast hearth — 


and under that esthetic mantle, but he supposed 
now he never should. He said it was all very dif- 
ferent from that tunnel, the old Albany depot, 


where they had waited the morning they went to ~~ 
New York when they were starting on their wed- 


ding journey. cay 
“The morning, Basil!’ cried his wife. ‘We 

went at night; and we were going to take the boat, 

but it stormed so!’ She gave him a glance of such 


reproach that he could not answer anything; and — 


now she asked him whether he supposed their cook 
and second girl would be contented with one of 
those dark holes where they put girls to sleep in 
New York flats, and what she should do if Margaret, 


it “th 
bby 
f 


——————— 


12 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


especially, left her. He ventured to suggest that 


_Margaret would probably like the city; but if she 


left, there were plenty of other girls to be had in 
New York. She replied that there were none she 
could trust, and that she knew Margaret would not 
stay. He asked her why she took her, then; why 
she did not give her up at once; and she answered 
that it would be inhuman to give her up just in 
the edge of the winter. She had promised to keep 
her; and Margaret was pleased with the notion of 
going to New York, where she had a cousin. 

‘‘Then perhaps she’ll be pleased with the notion 
of staying,” he said. 

“Oh, much you know about it!” she retorted; 
and in view of the hypothetical difficulty and his 
want of sympathy, she fell into a gloom, from which 
she roused herself at last by declaring that if there 
was nothing else in the flat they took, there should 
be a light kitchen and a bright sunny bedroom for 
Margaret. He expressed the belief that they could 
easily find such a flat as that, and she denounced 
his fatal optimism, which buoyed him up in the ab- 
sence of an undertaking, and let him drop into the 
depths of despair in its presence. 

He owned this defect of temperament, but he 
said that it compensated the opposite in her char- 
acter. ‘I suppose that’s one of the chief uses of 
marriage; people supplement each other, and form 
a pretty fair sort of human being together. The 
only drawback to the theory is that unmarried peo- 
ple seem each as complete and whole as a married 
pair.” 

She refused to be amused ; she turned her face to 
the window and put her handkerchief up under her 
veil. 

It was not till the dining-car was attached to 
their train that they were both able to escape for an 
hour into the care-free mood of their earlier travels, 
when they were so easily taken out of themselves. 
The time had been when they could have found 
enough in the conjectural fortunes and characters 
of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This 
phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world 
was still full of novelty and interest for them, but 
it required all the charm of the dining-car now to 


lay the anxieties that beset them. It was so potent 
for the moment, however, that they could take an 
objective view at their sitting cozily down there to- 
gether, as if they had only themselves in the world. 
They wondered what the children were doing, the 
children who possessed them so intensely when pre- 
sent, and now, by a fantastic operation of absence, 
seemed almost nonexistent. They tried to be home- 
sick for them, but failed; they recognized with 
comfortable self-abhorrence that this was terrible, 
but owned a fascination in being alone; at the same 
time they could not imagine how people felt who 
never had any children. They contrasted the luxury 
of dining that way, with every advantage except a 
band of music, and the old way of rushing out to. 
snatch a fearful joy at the lunch-counters of the 
Worcester and Springfield and New Haven stations. 
They had not gone often to New York since their 
wedding journey, but they had gone often enough 
to have noted the change from the lunch-counter 
to the lunch-basket brought into the train, from 
which you could subsist with more ease and dig- 
nity, but seemed destined to a superabundance 
of pickles, whatever you ordered. 

They thought well of themselves now that they 
could be both critical and tolerant of flavors not 
very sharply distinguished from one another in their 
dinner, and they lingered over their coffee and 
watched the autumn landscape through the win- 
dows. 

“Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year,” 
he said, with patronizing forbearance toward the 
painted woodlands whirling by. ‘‘Do you see how 
the foreground next the train rushes from us and 
the background keeps abreast of us, while the mid- 
dle distance seems stationary? I don’t think I 
ever noticed that effect before. There ought to be 
something literary in it: retreating past and advan- 
cing future, and deceitfully permanent present: 
something like that ?” 

His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap be- 
fore rising. “Yes. You mustn’t waste any of 
these ideas now.” 

“Oh no; it would be money out of Fulkerson’s 
pocket.” 


VII. 


Tury went to a quiet hotel far down-town, and 
took a small apartment which they thought they 
could easily afford for the day or two they need 
spend in looking up a furnished flat. They were 
used to staying at this hotel when they came on for 
a little outing in New York, after some rigid winter 


in Boston, at the time of the spring exhibitions. 


They were remembered there from year to year; 
the colored call-boys, who never seemed to get any 


older, smiled upon them, and the clerk called March 


by name even before he registered. He asked if 
Mrs. March were with him, and said then he sup- 
posed they would want their usual quarters; and 
in a moment they were domesticated in a far 
interior that seemed to have been waiting for them 
in a clean, quiet, patient disoccupation ever since 
they left it two years before. The little parlor, with 
its gilt paper and ebonized furniture, was the light- 
est of the rooms, but it was not very light at noon- 
day without the gas, which the bell-boy now flared 


‘ONISIY WWOatd dVvVI YAH WO SHNOYO ANOS daHSAYd HaIM SIH,, 


‘SUA, 


¢ (MON SVGGI aSdHL dO ANV ALSVA TNISAW N04 


-/. Leds - 
(Oe 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


up for them. The uproar of the city came to it in 
a soothing murmur, and they took possession of its 
peace and comfort with open celebration. After 
all, they agreed, there was no place in the world so 
delightful as a hotel apartment like that; the 
boasted charms of home were nothing to it; and 
then the magic of its being always there, ready for 
any one, every one, just as if it were for some one 
alone: it was like the experience of an Arabian 
Nights hero come true for all the race. 

“ Oh, why can’t we always stay here, just we two!” 
Mrs. March sighed to her husband, as he came out 
of his room rubbing his face red with the towel, 
while she studied a new arrangement of her bonnet 
and hand-bag on the mantel. 

“And ignore the past? I’m willing. Dve no 
doubt that the children could get on perfectly well 
without us, and could find some lot in the scheme 
of Providence that would really be just as well for 
them.” 

“Yes; or could contrive somehow never to have 
existed. I should insist upon that. If they are, 
don’t you see that we couldn’t wish them not to be?” 

“Oh yes; I see your point; it’s simply incontro- 
vertible.” 

She laughed, and said: “ Well, at any rate, if we 
can’t find a flat to suit us, we can all crowd into 
these three rooms somehow, for the winter, and 
then browse about for meals. By the week we 
could get them much cheaper; and we could save 
on the eating, as they do in Europe. Or on some- 
thing else.” 

“Something else, probably,” said March. “ But 
we won’t take this apartment till the ideal furnish- 
ed flat winks out altogether. We shall not have 
any trouble. We can easily find some one who 
is going South for the winter, and will be glad to 
give up their flat ‘to the right party’ at a nominal 
rent. That’s my notion. That’s what the Evanses 
did one winter when they came on here in February. 
All but the nominality of the rent.” 

“Yes, and we could pay a very good rent and 
still save something on letting our house. You 
can settle yourselves in a hundred different ways 
in New York; that zs one merit of the place. But 
if everything else fails, we can come back to this. 
I want you to take the refusal of it, Basil. And 
we'll commence looking this very evening as soon 
as we’ve had dinner. I cut a lot of things out 
of the Herald as we came on. See here!” 

She took a long strip of paper out of her hand-bag 
with minute advertisements pinned transversely upon 
it, and forming the effect of some glittering nonde- 
script vertebrate. 

“Looks something like the sea-serpent,” said 
March, drying his hands on the towel, while he 
glanced up and down the list. “But we sha’n’t 
have any trouble. I’ve no doubt there are half a 
dozen things there that will do. You haven’t gone 


13 


uptown? Because we must be near the very 
Other Week office.” 

“No; but I wish Mr. Fulkerson hadn’t called it 
that! .It always makes one think of ‘jam yesterday 
and jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day,’ in Through 
the Looking-glass. They’re all in this region.” 

They were still at their table, beside a low win- 
dow, where some sort of never-blooming shrub 
symmetrically balanced itself in a large pot, with 
a leaf to the right and a leaf to the left and a 
spear up the middle, when Fulkerson came stepping 
square-footedly over the thick dining-room carpet. 
He wagged in the air a gay hand of salutation at 
sight of them, and of repression when they offered 
to rise to meet him; then, with an apparent simul- 
taneity of action, he gave a hand to each, pulled up 
a chair from the next table, put his hat and stick 
on the floor beside it, and seated himself. 

‘Well, you’ve burnt your ships behind you, sure 
enough,” he said, beaming his satisfaction upon 
them from eyes and teeth. 

“The ships are burnt,” said March, “though I’m 
not sure we did it alone. But here we are, looking 
for shelter, and a little anxious about the disposi- 
tion of the natives.” 

‘“‘Oh, they’re an awful peaceable lot,” said Ful- 
kerson. “I’ve been round amongst the caciques a 
little, and I think I’ve got two or three places that 
will just suit you, Mrs. March. How did you leave 
the children ?” 

“Oh, how kind of you! Very well, and very 
proud to be left in charge of the smoking 
wrecks.” 

Fulkerson naturally paid no attention to what 
she said, being but secondarily interested in the 
children at the best. ‘‘ Here are some things right 
in this neighborhood, within gunshot of the office, 
and if you want you can go and look at them 
to-night; the agents gave me houses where the peo- 
ple would be in.” 

“We will go and look at them instantly,” said 
Isabel. ‘‘ Or, as soon as you’ve had coffee with us,” 

“Never do,” Fulkerson replied. He gathered up 
his hat and stick. ‘Just rushed in to say Hello, 
and got to run right away again. I tell you, March, 
things are humming. I’m after those fellows with 
a Sharp stick all the while to keep them from loaf- 
ing on my house, and at the same time I’m just 
bubbling over with ideas about The Lone Hand— 
wish we could call it that!—that I want to talk up 
with you.” 

“Well, come to breakfast,” said Isabel, cordially. 

“No; the ideas will keep till you’ve secured your 
lodge in this vast wilderness. Good-by.” 

“You’re as nice as you can be, Mr. Fulkerson,” 
she said, “to keep us in mind when you have so 
much to occupy you.” ¢ 

“T wouldn’t have anything to occupy me if I 
hadn't kept you in mind, Mrs. March,” said Fulker- 


14 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


son, going off upon as good a speech as he could 
apparently hope to make. 

‘“¢ Why, Basil,” said Mrs. March, when he was gone, 
“he’s charming! But now we mustn’t lose an in- 
stant. Let’s see where the places are.’’ She ranover 
the half-dozen agents’ permits. ‘‘ Capital—first-rate 
—the very thing—every one. Well, I consider our- 
selves settled! We can go back to the children to- 
morrow if we like, though I rather think I should 
like to stay over another day and get a little rested 


for the final pulling up that’s got to come. But: 


this simplifies everything enormously, and Mr, Ful- 
kerson is as thoughtful and as sweet as he can be. 
I know you will get on well with him. He has 
such a good heart. And his attitude toward you, 
Basil, is beautiful always—so respectful; or not that 
so much as appreciative. Yes, appreciative—that’s 
the word; I must always keep that in mind.” 

“It’s quite important to do so,” said March. 

“Yes,” she assented, seriously; “and we must not 
forget just what kind of flat we are going to look 
for, The sine gua nons are an elevator and steam 
heat, not above the third floor, to begin with. 
Then we must each have a room, and you must 
have your study and I must have my parlor; and 
the two girls must each have a room. With the 
kitchen and dining-room, how many does that 
make ?” : 

‘79 Ten,’ 

“JT thought eight. Well, no matter. You can 
work in the parlor, and run into your bedroom when 
anybody comes; and I can sit in mine, and the girls 
must put up with one, if it’s large and sunny, though 
I’ve always given them two at home. And the 
kitchen must be sunny, so they can sit in it. And 
the rooms must all have outside light. And the 
rent must not be over eight hundred for the winter, 
We only get a thousand for our whole house, and 
we must save something out of that, so as to cover 
the expenses of moving. Now, do you think you 
can remember all that ?” 

“Not the half of it,” said March. “ But you can; 
or if you forget a third of it, I can come in with my 
partial half, and more than make it up.” 

She had brought her bonnet and sacque down- 
stairs with her, and was transferring them from the 
hat-rack to her person while she talked. The friend- 
ly door-boy let them into the street, and the clear 
October evening air inspirited her so that as she 
tucked her hand under her husband’s arm and be- 
gan to pull him along, she said, “If we find some- 
thing right away—and we’re just as likely to get 
the right flat soon as late; it’s all a lottery—we’ll 
go to the theatre somewhere.” 

She had a moment’s panic about having left the 
agents’ permits on the table, and after remember- 
ing that she had put them into her little shopping 
bag, where she kept her money (each note crushed 
into a round wad), and had left that on the hat- 


rack, where it would certainly be stolen, she found 
it on her wrist. She did not think that very funny, 
but after a first impulse to inculpate her husband, 
she let him laugh, while they stopped under a lamp, 
and she held the permits half a yard away to read 
the numbers on them. 

“ Where are your glasses, Isabel ?” 

“On the mantel in our room, of course.” 

“Then you ought to have brought a pair of 
tongs.” 

“JT wouldn’t get off second-hand jokes, Basil,” 
she said; and “ Why, here!’ she cried, whirling 
round to the door before which they had halted, 
“this is the very number! Well, I do believe it’s a 
sign |” 

One of those colored men who soften the trade 
of janitor in many of the smaller apartment-houses 
in New York by the sweetness of their race, let 
the Marches in, or, rather, weleoomed them to the 
possession of the premises by the bow with which 
he acknowledged their permit. It was a large old 
mansion cut up into five or six dwellings; but it had 
kept some traits of its former dignity, which pleased 
people of their sympathetic tastes. The dark ma- 
hogany trim, of sufficiently ugly design, gave a rich 
gloom to the hallway, which was wide,‘and paved 
with marble; the carpeted stairs curved aloft through 
a generous space. 

‘““There is no elevator ?” Mrs. March asked of the 
janitor. 

He answered, ‘‘ No, ma’am; only two flights up,” 
so winningly that she said, 

“Oh!” in courteous apology, and whispered her 
husband as she foilowed lightly up, “ We’ll take it, 
Basil, if it’s like the rest.” 

“Tf it’s like him, you mean.” 

“1 don’t wonder they wanted to own them,” she 
hurriedly philosophized. “If I had such a crea- 
ture, nothing but death should part us, and I should 
no more think of giving him his freedom—” 

““No; we couldn’t afford it,’ returned her hus. 
band. 

The apartment the janitor unlocked for them, and 
lit up from those chandeliers and brackets of gilt 
brass in the form of vine bunches, leaves, and 
tendrils in which the early gas-fitter realized most 
of his conceptions of beauty, had rather more of the 
ugliness than the dignity of the hall. But the 
rooms were large, and they grouped themselves in 
a reminiscence of the time when they were part 
of a dwelling, that had its charm, its pathos, its im- 
pressiveness. Where they were cut up into smaller 
spaces, it had been done with the frankness with 
which a proud old family of fallen fortunes prac- 
tises its economies. The rough pine floors showed 
a black border of tack heads where carpets had 
been lifted and put down for generations; the 
white paint was yellow with age; the apartment had 
light at the front and at the back, and two or three 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 15 


rooms had glimpses of the day through small win- 
dows let into their corners ; another one seemed lift- 
ing an appealing eye to heaven through a glass 
circle in its ceiling; the rest must darkle in per- 
petual twilight. Yet something pleased in it all, 
and Mrs. March had gone far to adapt the different 
rooms to the members of her family, when she sud- 
denly thought (and for her to think was to say), 
“Why, but there’s nosteam heat !” 

“No, ma’am,” the janitor admitted; “but dere’s 
grates in most o’ de rooms, and“dere’s furnace heat 
in de halls.” 

““That’s true,” she admitted, and having placed 
her family in the apartments, it was hard to get 
them outagain. ‘ Could we manage ?” she referred 
to her husband. 

“Why, Z shouldn’t care for the steam heat, if— 
What is the rent?” he broke off to ask the aa 

‘Nine hundred, sir.” 

March Beetuded to his mite, “Tf it were tun 
nished.” 

‘ Why, of course! What could I have been 
thinking of? We’re looking for a furnished flat,” 
she explained to the janitor, ‘‘and this was so plea- 
sant and home-like that I never thought whether it 
was furnished or not.” 

She smiled upon the janitor, and he entered into 
the joke and chuckled so amiably at her flattering 
oversight on the way down-stairs, that she said, as 
she pinched her husband’s arm, “ Now, if you don’t 
give him a quarter, Pll never speak to you again, 
Basil !” 

“T would have given half a dollar willingly to get 
you beyond his glamour,” said March, when they 
were safely on the pavement outside. ‘If it hadn’t 
been for my strength of character, you’d have taken 
an unfurnished flat without heat and with no eleva- 
tor, at nine hundred a year, when you had just 
sworn me to steam heat, an elevator, furniture, and 
eight hundred.” 

“Yes! How could I have lost my head so com- 
pletely 2” she said, with a lenient amusement in her 
aberration which she was not always able to feel in 
her husband’s, 

“The next time a colored janitor opens the door 
to us, Pll tell him the apartment doesn’t suit at the 
threshold. It’s the only way to manage you, Isabel.” 

“Tt’s true. I am in love with the whole race. I 
never saw one of them that didn’t have perfectly 
angelic manners. I think we shall all be black in 
heaven—that is, black-souled.” 

“That isn’t the usual theory,” said March. 

“Well, perhaps not,” she assented. ‘‘ Where are 
we going now? Oh yes, to the Xenophon !” 

She pulled him gayly along again, and after they 
had walked a block down and half a block over, 
they stood before the apartment-house of that 
name, which was cut on the gas lamps on either 
side of the heavily spiked, esthetic-hinged black 


door. The titter of an electric bell brought a large 
fat Buttons, with a stage effect of being dressed to 
look small, who said he would call the janitor, and 
they waited in the dimly splendid, copper-colored 
interior, admiring the whorls and waves into which 
the wall paint was combed, till the janitor came in 
his gold-banded cap, like a continental portier. 
When they said they would like to see Mrs. Gros- 
venor Green’s apartment he owned his inability to 
cope with the affair, and said he must send for the 
superintendent; he was either in the Herodotus or 
the Thucydides, and would be there in a minute. 
The Buttons brought him—a Yankee of browbeating 
presence in plain clothes—almost before they had 
time to exchange a frightened whisper in recogni- 
tion of the fact that there could be no doubt of the 
steam heat and elevator in this case. Half stifled 
in the one, they mounted in the other eight stories, 
while they tried to keep their self-respect under the 
gaze of the superintendent, which they felt was 
classing and assessing them with unfriendly ac- 


. curacy. They could not, and they faltered abashed 


at the threshold of-Mrs. Grosvenor Green’s apart- 
ment, while the superintendent lit the gas in the 
gangway that he called a private hall, and in the 
drawing-room and the succession of chambers 
stretching rearward to the kitchen. Everything had 
been done by the architect. to save space, and 
everything to waste it by Mrs. Grosvenor Green, 
She had conformed to a law for the necessity of 
turning round in each room, and had folding-beds in 
the chambers; but there her subordination had 
ended, and wherever you might have turned round 
she had put a gimcrack so that you would knock it 
over if you did turn. The place was rather pretty 
and even imposing at first glance, and it took sever- 
al joint ballots for March and his wife to make sure 
that with the kitchen there were only six rooms. 
At every door hung a portiére from large rings on a 
brass rod; every shelf and dressing-case and mantel 
was littered with gimcracks, and the corners of the 
tiny rooms were curtained off, and behind. these 
portiéres swarmed more gimcracks. The front of 
the upright piano had what March called a short- 
skirted portiére on it, and the top was covered with 
vases, with dragon candlesticks, and with Jap fans, 
which also expanded themselves bat-wise on the 
walls between the etchings and the water-colors. 
The floors were covered with filling, and then rugs, 
and then skins; the easy-chairs all had tidies, 
Armenian and Turkish and Persian; the lounges 
and sofas had embroidered cushions hidden under 
tidies. The radiator was concealed by a Jap screen, 
and over the top of this some Arab scarfs were 
flung. There was a superabundance of clocks. 
China pugs guarded the hearth; a brass sunflower 
smiled from the top of either andiron, and a brass 
peacock spread its tail before them inside a high 
filigree fender; on one side was a coal-hod in re- 


16 


poussé brass, and on the other a wrought-iron wood- 
basket. Some red Japanese bird-kites were stuck 
about in the necks of spelter vases, a crimson Jap 
umbrella hung opened beneath the chandelier, and 
each globe had a shade of yellow silk. 

March, when he had recovered his self-command 
a little in the presence of the agglomeration, com- 
forted himself by calling the bric-a-brac James- 
cracks, as if this was their full name. 

The disrespect he was able to show the whole 
apartment by means of this joke strengthened him 
to say boldly to the superintendent that it was 
altogether too small; then he asked carelessly what 
the rent was. 

“Two hundred and fifty.” 

The Marches gave a start, and looked at each other. 

“Don’t you think we could make it do?” she 
asked him, and he could see that she had mentally 
saved five hundred dollars as the difference between 
the rent of their house and that of this flat. “It 
has some very pretty features, and we could manage 
to squeeze in, couldn’t we ?” 

“ You won’t find another furnished flat like it for 
no two fifty a month in the whole city,” the super- 
intendent put in. 

They exchanged glances again, and March said, 
carelessly, ‘It’s too small.” 

“There’s a vacant flat in the Herodotus for eigh- 
teen hundred a year, and one in the Thucydides for 
fifteen,” the superintendent suggested, clicking his 
keys together as they sank down in the elevator; 
“seven rooms and a bath.” 

“Thank you,” said March; “we’re looking for a 
furnished flat.” 

They felt that the superintendent parted from them 
with repressed sarcasm. 

‘Oh, Basil, do you think we really made him 
think it was the smallness and not the dearness ?” 

‘““No; but we saved our self-respect in the at- 
tempt; and that’s a great deal.” 

“Of course I wouldn't have taken it, anyway, 
with only six rooms, and so high up. But what 
prices! Now we must be very circumspect about 
the next place.” 

It was a janitress, large, fat, with her arms wound up 
in her apron, who received them there. Mrs. March 
gave her a succinct but perfect statement of their 
needs. She failed to grasp the nature of them, or 
feigned to do so. She shook her head, and said 
that her son would show them the flat. There was 
a radiator visible in the narrow hall, and Isabel 
tacitly compromised on steam heat without an ele- 
vator, as the flat was only one flight up. When 
the son appeared from below with a small kerosene 
hand-lamp, it appeared that the flat was unfurnished, 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


but there was no stopping him till he had shown 
it in all its impossibility. When they got safely 
away from it and into the street, March said, 
“Well, have you had enough for to-night, Isabel? 
Shall we go to the theatre now?” 

“Not on any account. I want to see the whole 
list of flats that Mr. Fulkerson thought would be 
the very thing for us.” She laughed, but with a 
certain bitterness. . 

‘You'll be calling him my Mr. Fulkerson next, 
Isabel.” 

“Oh no!” 

The fourth address was a furnished flat without 
a kitchen, in a house with a general restaurant. 
The fifth was a furnished house. At the sixth a 
pathetic widow and her pretty daughter wanted to 
take a family to board, and would give them a pri- 
vate table at a rate which the Marches would have 
thought low in Boston. 

Mrs. March came away tingling with compassion 
for their evident anxiety, and this pity naturally 
soured into a sense of injury. ‘‘ Well, I must say 
I have completely lost confidence in Mr, Fulkerson’s 
judgment. Anything more utterly different from 
what I told him we wanted I couldn’t imagine. If 
he doesn’t manage any better about his business 
than he has done about this, it will be a perfect 
failure.” 

“Well, well, let’s hope he’ll be more circumspect 
about that,” her husband returned, with ironical 
propitiation. “But I don’t think it’s Fulkerson’s 
fault altogether. Perhaps it’s the house agents’. 
They’re a very illusory generation. There seems to 
be something in the human habitation that corrupts 
the natures of those who deal in it, to buy or sell it, 
to hire or let it. You go to an agent and tell him 
what kind of a house you want. He has no such 
house, and he sends you to look at something alto- 
gether different, upon the well-ascertained principle 
that if you can’t get what you want, you will take 
what you can get. You don’t suppose the ‘party’ 
that took our house in Boston was looking for any 
such house? He was looking for a totally different 
kind of house in another part of the town.” 

““T don’t believe that!” his wife broke in. 

“Well, no matter. But see what a scandalous 
rent you asked for it!” 

“We didn’t get much more than half; and, be- 
sides, the agent told me to ask fourteen hundred.” 

“Oh, ’m not blaming you, Isabel. I’m only 
analyzing the house agent, and exonerating Ful- 
kerson.” 

“Well, I don’t believe he told them just what we 
wanted; and, at any rate, ’m done with agents. 


To-morrow, I’m going entirely by advertisements.” 


GWYN TI0d YIAHL SVM SIHL dl Sv ‘SHOVUOSANVE 
GHL ONITIVO AM ATASNIH GALYOANOD ‘NOILVUANOTNDV HHL dO GONUSHYd AHL NI GAWIIT V GNVYNWOO-ATIS SIN’ GANTAOORY AVH GH NAHM ‘HOUR ,, 


. 


(79 


Ovud-v-O1ud 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


17 


Vili. 


Mrs. Marcu took the vertebrate with her to the 
Vienna Coffee-house, where they went to breakfast 
mext.morning. She made March buy her the Herald 
and the World, and she added to its spiny convolu- 
tions from them. She read the new advertisements 
aloud with ardor, and with faith to believe that 
the apartments described in them were every one 
truthfully represented, and that any one of them 
was richly responsive to their needs. ‘Elegant, 
light, large, single, and outside flats” were offered 
with ‘all improvements—bath, ice-box, etc.”—for 
$25 and $30 a month. The cheapness was amaz- 
ing. The Wagram, the Esmeralda, the Jacinth, ad- 
vertised them for $40 and $60, “‘ with steam heat 
and elevator,” rent free till November. Others, 
attractive from their air of conscientious scruple, 
announced “ first-class flats; good order; reason- 
able rents.” The Helena asked the reader if she 
had seen the “‘ cabinet finish, hard-wood floors, and 
frescoed ceilings” of its $50 flats; the Asteroid 
affirmed that such apartments, with ‘‘six light rooms 
and bath, porcelain wash-tubs, electric bells, and hall 
boy,” as it offered for $75 were unapproached by 
competition, There was a sameness in the jargon 
which tended to confusion. Mrs. March got several 
flats on her list which promised neither steam heat 
nor elevators; she forgot herself so far as to include 
two or three as remote from the down-town region 
of her choice as Harlem. But after she had reject- 
ed these the nondescript vertebrate was still volu- 
minous enough to sustain her buoyant hopes. 

The waiter, who remembered them from year to 
year, had put them at a window giving a pretty good 
section of Broadway, and before they set out on their 
search they had a moment of reminiscence. They 
recalled the Broadway of five, of ten, of twenty years 
ago, swelling and roaring with a tide of gayly paint- 
ed omnibuses and of picturesque traffic that the 
horse-cars have now banished from it. The grind 
of their wheels and the clash of their harsh bells im- 
perfectly fill the silence that the omnibuses have 
left, and the eye misses the tumultuous perspective 
-of former times. 

They went out and stood for a moment before 
Grace Church, and looked down the stately thorough- 
fare, and found it no longer impressive, no longer 
characteristic. It is still Broadway in name, but 
now it is like any other street. You do not now 
take your life in your hand when you attempt to 
cross if; the Broadway policeman who supported 
the elbow of timorous beauty in the hollow of his 
cotton-gloved palm and guided its little fearful boots 
-over the crossing, while he arrested the billowy om- 
nibuses on either side with an imperious glance, 
is gone, and all that certain processional, barbaric 
gayety of the place is gone. 


“Palmyra, Baalbec, Timour of the Desert,” said 
March, voicing their common feeling of the change. 

They turned and went into the beautiful church, 
and found themselves in time for the matin ser- 
vice. Rapt far from New York, if not from earth, 
in the dim richness of the painted light, the hallow- 
ed music took them with solemn ecstasy; the aerial, 
aspiring Gothic forms seemed to lift them heaven- 
ward, They came out reluctant into the dazzle and 
bustle of the street, with a feeling that they were too 
good for it, which they confessed to each other with 
whimsical consciousness. 

‘““But no matter how consecrated we feel now,” 
he said, ‘“‘we mustn’t forget that we went into the 
church for precisely the same reason that we went 
to the Vienna Café for breakfast—to gratify an 
esthetic sense, to renew the faded pleasure of travel 
for a moment, to get back into the Europe of our 
youth. It was a purely pagan impulse, Isabel, an¢ 
we'd better own it.” 

‘“T don’t know,” she returned. ‘I think we re- 
duce ourselves to the bare bones too much. | I wish 
we didn’t always recognize the facts as we do. Some- 
times I should like to blink them. I should like 
to think I was devouter than I am, and younger, 
and prettier.” 

“ Better not; you couldn’t keep it up. Honesty 
is the best policy even in such things.” 

“No; I don’t like it, Basil. I should rather wait 
till the last day for some of my motives to come to 
the top. I know they’re always mixed, but do let 
me give them the benefit of a doubt sometimes.” 

“Well, well, have it your own way, my dear. 
But I prefer not to lay up so many disagreeable sur- 
prises for myself at that time.” 

She would not consent. “I know I am a good 
deal younger than I was. I feel quite in the mood 
of that morning when we walked down Broadway 
on our wedding journey. Don’t you?” 

“Oh yes. But 1 know I’m not younger; I’m 
only prettier.” 

She laughed for pleasure in his joke, and also 
for unconscious joy in the gay New York weather, 
in which there was no arriére-pensée of the east 
wind. They had crossed Broadway, and were walk- 
ing over to Washington Square, in the region of 
which they now hoped to place themselves. , The 
primo tenore statue of Garibaldi had not yet taken 
possession of the place in the name of Latin prog- 
ress, but they met Italian faces, French faces, Span- 
ish faces, as they strolled over the asphalt walks, 
under the thinning shadows of the autumn-stricken 
sycamores. They met the familiar picturesque 
raggedness of southern Europe with the old kindly 
illusion that somehow it existed for their apprecia- 
tion, and that it found adequate compensation for 


18 


poverty in this. March thought he sufficiently ex- 
pressed his tacit sympathy in sitting down on one of 
the iron benches with his wife, and letting a little 
Neapolitan put a superfluous shine on his boots, while 
their desultory comment wandered with equal esteem 
to the old-fashioned American respectability which 
keeps the north side of the square in vast mansions 
of red brick, and the international shabbiness which 
has invaded the southern border, and broken it up 
into lodging-houses, shops, beer-gardens, and studios. 

They noticed the sign of an apartment to let on 
the north side, and as soon as the little boot-black 
could be bought off they went over to look at it. 
The janitor met them at the door and examined 
them. Then he said, as if still in doubt, “It has 
ten rooms, and the rent is twenty-eight hundred 
dollars,” 

“Tt wouldn’t do, then,” March replied, and left 
him to divide the responsibility between the paucity 
of the rooms and the enormity of the rent as he 
best might. But their self-love had received a 
wound, and they questioned each other what it was 
in their appearance made him doubt their ability to 
pay so much. 

“Of course we don’t look like New-Yorkers,” 
sighed Mrs. March, ‘‘and we’ve walked through the 
Square. That might be as if we had walked along 
the Park Street walk in the Common before we 
came out on Beacon. Do you suppose he could have 
seen you getting your boots blacked in that way ?” 

“It’s useless to ask,” said March. ‘“ But I never 
can recover from this blow.” 

“Oh pshaw! You know you hate such things as 
badly as Ido. It was very impertinent of him.” 

‘Let us go back, and écraser ’infadme by paying 
him a year’s rent in advance and taking immediate 
possession. Nothing else can soothe my wounded 
feelings. You were not having your boots blacked: 
why shouldn’t he have supposed you were a New- 
Yorker, and I a country cousin ?” 

“ They always know. Don’t you remember Mrs. 
Williams’s going to a Fifth Avenue milliner in a 
Worth dress, and the woman’s asking her instantly 
what hotel she should send her hat to ?” 

‘““Yes; these things drive one to despair. I don’t 
wonder the bodies of so many genteel strangers are 
found in the waters around New York. Shall we 
try the south side, my dear? or had we better go 
back to our rooms and rest awhile ?” 

Mrs. March had out the vertebrate, and was con- 
sulting one of its glittering ribs, and glancing. up 
from it at a house before which they stood. ‘Yes, 
it’s the number; but do they call this being ready 
October 1st?” The little area in front of the base- 
ment was heaped with a mixture of mortar, bricks, 
laths, and shavings from the interior; the brown- 
stone steps to the front door were similarly be- 
strewn; the doorway showed the half-open rough 
pine carpenter’s hatch of an unfinished house; the 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


sashless windows of every story showed the activity 
of workmen within; the clatter of hammers and the 
hiss of saws came out to them from every opening. 

“They may call it October 1st,” said March, “ be-. 
cause it’s too late to contradict them. But they’d 
better not call it December Ist in my presence; I'll 
let them say January Ist, at a pinch.” 

“We will go in and look at it anyway,” said his 
wife; and he admired how, when she was once with- 
in, she began provisionally to settle the family in 
each of the several floors with the female instinct. 
for domiciliation which never failed her. She had 
the help of the landlord, who was present to urge: 
forward the workmen apparently; he lent a hopeful 
fancy to the solution of all her questions.. To get 
her from under his influence, March had to represent. 
that the place was damp Ban undried. plastering, 
and that if she staid she would probably be down 
with that New York pneumonia which visiting Bos- 
tonians are always dying of. Once safely on the 
pavement outside, she realized that thé apartment 
was not only unfinished, but unfurnished, and had 
neither steam heat nor elevator. ‘ But I thought. 
we had better look at everything,” she explained. 

“Yes, but not take everything. If I hadn't 
pulled you away from there by main. force you'd 
have not only died of New York pneumonia on the. 
spot, but you’d have had us all settled there before 
we knew what we were about.” 

“Well, that’s what I can’t help, Basil. It’s the. 
only way I can realize whether it will do for us, I 
have to dramatize the whole thing.” 

She got a deal of pleasure as well as excitement 
out of this,and he had to own that the process of 
setting up house-keeping in so many different. 
places was not only entertaining, but tended, through 
association with their first beginnings in hGuces keane 
ing, to restore the image of their early married tha. 
and to make them young again. 

It went on all day, and. continued far into. the 
night, until it was too late to go to the theatre, too 
late to do anything but tumble into bed and si- 
multaneously fall on sleep. They groaned over: 
their reiterated disappointments, but they could not. 
deny that the interest. was unfailing, and that they 
got a great deal of fun out of it all. Nothing: 
could abate Mrs. March’s faith in her advertise- 
ments. One of them sent her to a flat of ten rooms. 
which promised to be the solution of all their diffi- 
culties ; it proved to be over a livery-stable, a liquor 
Store, and a milliner’s shop, none of the first fash- 
ion. Another led them far into old Greenwich 
Village to an apartment-house, which she refused to: 
enter behind a small girl with a loaf of bread under 
one arm and a quart can of milk under the other, 

In their search they were obliged, as March com-. 
plained, to the acquisition of useless information in 
a degree unequalled in their experience. They came. 
to excel in the sad knowledge of the line at which 


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A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


respectability distinguishes itself from shabbiness. 
Flattering advertisements took them to numbers of 
huge apartment-houses chiefly distinguishable from 
tenement-houses by the absence of fire-escapes on 
their facades, till Mrs. March refused to stop at any 
door where there were more than six bell-ratchets 
and speaking-tubes on either hand. Before the 
middle of the afternoon she decided against ratchets 
altogether, and confined herself to knobs neatly set 
in the door-trim. Her husband was still sunk in 
the superstition that you can live anywhere you like 
in New York, and he would have paused at some 
places where her quicker eye caught the fatal sign 
of “Modes” in the ground-floor windows. She 
found that there was an east and west line beyond 
which they could not go if they wished to keep 
their self-respect, and that within the region to 
which they had restricted themselves there was a 
choice of streets. At first all the New York streets 
looked to them ill paved, dirty, and repulsive; the 
general infamy imparted itself in their casual im- 
pression to streets in no wise guilty. But they be- 
gan to notice that some streets were quiet and 
clean, and though never so quiet and clean as Bos- 
ton streets, that they wore an air of encouraging re- 
form, and suggested a future of greater and greater 
domesticity. Whole blocks of these down-town 
cross streets seemed to have been redeemed from 
decay, and even in the midst of squalor a dwelling 
here and there had been seized, painted a dull red 
as to its brick-work, and a glossy black as to its 
wood-work, and with a bright brass bell-pull and 
door-knob and a large brass plate for its key-hole 
escutcheon, had been endowed with an effect of 
purity and pride which removed its shabby neigh- 
borhood far from it. 

Some of these houses were quite small, and 
imaginably within their means; but, as March said, 
somebody seemed always to be living there himself, 
and the fact that none of them were to rent kept 
Mrs. March true to her ideal of a flat. Nothing 
prevented its realization so much as its difference 
from the New York ideal of a flat, which was inflexi- 
bly seven rooms and a bath. One or two rooms 
might be at the front, the rest crooked and cornered 
backward through increasing and then decreasing 
darkness till they reached a light bedroom or kitchen 
at the rear. It might be the one or the other, but 
it was always the seventh room with the bath; or if, 
as sometimes happened, it was the eighth, it was so 
after having counted the bath as one. In this case 
the janitor said you always counted the bath as one. 
If the flats were advertised as having ‘“‘all light 
rooms,” he explained that any room with a window 
giving into the open air of a court or shaft was 
counted a light room, 

The Marches tried to make out oe it was that 
these flats were so much more repulsive than the 
apartments which every one lived in abroad; but 


19 


they could do so only upon the supposition that in 
their European days they were too young, too happy, 
too full of the future, to notice whether rooms were 
inside or outside, light or dark, big or little, high 
or low. ‘‘ Now we’re imprisoned in the present,” 
he said, “‘and we have to make the worst of it.” 

In their despair he had an inspiration, which she 
declared worthy of him: it was to take two small 
flats, of four or five rooms and a bath, and live in 
both. They tried this in a great many places; but 
they never could get two flats of the kind on the 
same floor where there were steam heat and an ele- 
vator. At one place they almost did it. They had 
resigned themselves to the humility of the neighbor- 
hood, to the prevalence of modistes and livery-stable- 
men (they seem to consort much in New York), to 
the garbage in the gutters and the litter of paper 
in the streets, to the faltering slats in the surround- 
ing window-shutters and the crumbled brown-stone 
steps and sills, when it turned out that one of the 
apartments had been taken between two visits they 
made. Then the only combination left open to 
them was of a ground-floor flat to the right and a 
third-floor flat to the left. | 

Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use 
at the first opportunity. In the mean time there 
were several flats which they thought they could 
almost make do: notably one where they could get 
an extra servant’s room in the basement four 
flights down, and another where they could get it in 
the roof five flights up. At the first the janitor 
was respectful and enthusiastic; at the second he 
had an effect of ironical pessimism. When they 
trembled on the verge of taking his apartment, he 
pointed out a spot in the kalsomining of the parlor 
ceiling, and gratuitously said, Now such a thing as 
that he should not agree to put in shape unless 
they took the apartment for a term of years. The 
apartment was unfurnished, and they recurred to 
the fact that they wanted a furnished apartment. 
This saved them in several other extremities; but 
short of extremity they could not keep their differ- 
ent requirements in mind, and were always about 
to decide without regard to some one of them. 

They went to several places twice without intend- 
ing: once to that old-fashioned house with the pleas- 
ant colored janitor, and wandered all over the apart- 
ment again with a haunting sense of familiarity, and 
then recognized the janitor and laughed; and to 
that house with the pathetic widow and the pretty 
daughter who wished to take them to board. They 
staid to excuse their blunder, and easily came by the. 
fact that the mother had taken the house that the 
girl might have a home while she was in New York 
studying art, and they hoped to pay their way by 
taking boarders. Her daughter was at her class 
now, the mother concluded; and they encouraged 
her to believe that it could only be a few days till 
the rest of her scheme was realized. 


20 


“T dare say we could be perfectly comfortable 
there,” March suggested when they had got away. 
“Now if we were truly humane, we would modify 
our desires to meet their needs, and end this sicken- 
ing search, wouldn’t we ?” 

“Yes; but we’re not truly humane,” his wife an- 
swered, ‘“‘or at least not in that sense. You know 
you hate boarding; and if we went there I should 
have them on my sympathies the whole time.” 

“T see. And then you would take it out of me.” 

“Then I should take it out of you. And if you 
are going to be so weak, Basil, and let every little 
thing work upon you in that way, you’d better not 
come to New York. You'll see enough misery 
here.” 

“Well, don’t take that superior tone with me, as 
if I were a child that had its mind set on an un- 
desirable toy, Isabel.” 

“Ah, don’t you suppose it’s because you are 
such a child in some respects that I like you, 
dear ?” she demanded, without relenting. 


“But I don’t find so much misery in New York.. 


I don’t suppose there’s any more suffering here to 
the population than there is in the country. And 
they’re so gay about it all. I think the outward as- 
pect of the place and the hilarity of the sky and air 
must get into the people’s blood. The weather is 
simply unapproachable ; and I don’t care if it is the 
ugliest place in the world, as you say. I suppose it 
is. It shrieks and yells with ugliness here and 
there; but it never loses its spirits. That widow is 
from the country. When she’s been a year in New 
York she’ll be as gay—as gay as an L road.” He 
celebrated a satisfaction they both had in the L 
roads. ‘They kill the streets and avenues; but at 
least they partially hide them, and that is some com- 
fort; and they do triumph over their prostrate forms 
with a savage exultation that is intoxicating. Those 
bends in the L that you get at the corner of Wash- 
ington Square, and just below the Cooper Institute 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


—they’re the gayest things in the world. Perfectly 
atrocious, of course, but incomparably picturesque! 
And the whole city is so,” said March, “or else the 
L would never have got built here. New York 
may be splendidly gay or squalidly gay, but, prince 
or pauper, it’s gay always.” 

“Yes, gay is the word,” she admitted, with a sigh. 
“ But frantic. I can’t get used to it. They forget 
death, Basil: they forget death in New York.” 

“Well, I don’t know that I’ve ever found much 
advantage in remembering it.” 

“Don’t say such a thing, dearest.” 

He could see that she had got to the end of her 
nervous strength for the present, and he proposed 
that they should take the elevated road as far as it 
would carry them into the country, and shake off 
their nightmare of flat-hunting for an hour or two; 
but her conscience would not let her. She convicted 
him of levity equal to that of the New-Yorkers in 
proposing such a thing; and they dragged through 
the day. She was too tired to care for dinner, and 
in the night she had a dream from which she woke 
herself with a cry that roused him too. It was 
something about the children at first, whom they had 
talked of wistfully before falling asleep, and then 
it was of a hideous thing with two square eyes and 
a series of sections growing darker and then lighter, 
till the tail of the monstrous articulate was quite 
Juminous again. She shuddered at the vague descrip- 
tion she was able to give; but he asked, “Did it 
offer to bite you ?” 

“No, That was the most frightful thing about it: 
it had no mouth.” 

March laughed. ‘“ Why, my dear, it was nothing 
but a harmless New York flat—seven rooms and a 
bath.” 

“T really believe it was,” she consented, recog- 
nizing an architectural resemblance, and she fell 
asleep again, and woke renewed for the work before 
them. 


IX. 


Tuer house-hunting no longer had novelty, but it 
still had interest ;- and they varied their day by tak- 
ing a coupé, by renouncing advertisements, and by 
reverting to agents. Some of these induced them 
to consider the idea of furnished houses; and Mrs. 
March learned tolerance for Fulkerson by accepting 
permits to visit flats and houses which had none of 
the qualifications she desired in either, and were as 
far beyond her means as they were out of the 
region to which she had geographically restricted 
herself. They looked at three thousand and four 
thousand dollar apartments, and rejected them for 
one reason or another which had nothing to do with 
the rent; the higher the rent was, the more critical 


they were of the slippery inlaid floors and the ar- 
rangement of the richly decorated rooms. They 
never knew whether they had deceived the janitor 
or not; as they came in a coupé, they hoped they 
had. 

They drove accidentally through one street that 
seemed gayer in the perspective than an L road. 
The fire-escapes, with their light iron balconies 
and ladders of iron, decorated the lofty house fronts ; 
the roadway and sidewalks and door-steps swarmed 
with children; women’s heads seemed to show at 
every window. In the basements, over which flights 
of high stone steps led to the tenements, were 
green-grocers’ shops abounding in cabbages, and 


THE VERTEBRATE, 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 
} 


provision stores running chiefly to bacon and sau- 
sages, and cobblers’ and tinners’ shops, and the like, 
in proportion to the small needs of a poor neighbor- 
hood. Ash barrels lined the sidewalks and garbage 
heaps filled the gutters; teams of all trades stood 
idly about; a peddler of cheap fruit urged his cart 
through the street, and mixed his cry with the joyous 
screams and shouts of the children and the scold- 
ing and gossiping voices of the women; the burly 
blue bulk of a policeman defined itself at the corner ; 
a drunkard zigzagged down the sidewalk toward 
him. It was not the abode of the extremest poverty, 
but of a poverty as hopeless as any in the world, 
transmitting itself from generation to generation, 
and establishing conditions of permanency to which 
human life adjusts itself as it does to those of some 
incurable disease, like leprosy. 

The time had been when the Marches would have 
taken a purély esthetic view of the facts as they 
glimpsed them in this street of tenement-houses ; 
when they would have contented themselves with 
saying that it was as picturesque as a street in 
Naples or Florence, and with wondering why no- 
body came to paint it; they would have thought 
they were sufficiently serious about it in blaming 
the artists for their failure to appreciate it, and 
going abroad for the picturesque when they had it 
here under their noses. It was to the nose that the 
street made one of its strongest appeals, and Mrs. 
March pulled up her window of the coupé. “ Why 
does he take us through such a disgusting street ?” 
she demanded, with an exasperation of which her 
husband divined the origin. 

“This driver may be a philanthropist in disguise,” 
he answered, with dreamy irony, ‘“‘and may want us 
to think about the people who are not merely 
carried through this street in a coupé, but have to 
spend their whole lives in it, winter and summer, 
with no hopes of driving out of it, except in a 
hearse. I must say they don’t seem to mind it. I 
haven’t seen a jollier crowd anywhere in New 
York. They seem to have forgotten death a little 
more completely than any of their fellow-citizens, 
Isabel. And I wonder what they think of us, mak- 
ing this gorgeous progress through their midst? I 
suppose they think we’re rich, and hate us—if they 
hate rich people; they don’t look as if they hated 
anybody. Should we be as patient as they are with 
their discomfort? I don’t believe there’s steam heat 
or an elevator in the whole block. Seven rooms 
and a bath would be more than the largest and gen- 
teelest family would know what to do with. They 
wouldn’t know what to do with the bath anyway.” 

His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart 
from the satirical point it had for themselves. 
“You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work 
some of these New York sights up for Hvery Other 
Week, Basil; you could do them very nicely.” 

“Yes; I’ve thought of that. But don’t let’s 


want him to take us there.”’ 


a1 


leave the personal ground. Doesn’t it make you 
feel rather small and otherwise unworthy when 
you see the kind of street these fellow-beings of 
yours live in, and then think how particular you are 
about locality and the number of bell-pulls? I 
don’t see even ratchets and speaking-tubes at these 
doors.” He craned his neck out of the window 
for a better look, and the children of discomfort 
cheered him, out of sheer good feeling and high 
spirits. ‘I didn’t know I was sopopular. Perhaps 
it’s a recognition of my humane sentiments.” 

“Oh, it’s very easy to have humane sentiments, 
and to satirize ourselves for wanting eight rooms 
and a bath in a good neighborhood, when we see 
how these wretched creatures live,” said his wife. 
“But if we shared all we have with them, and then 
settled down among them, what good would it do?” 

“‘ Not the least in the world. It might help us for 
the moment, but it wouldn’t keep the wolf from 
their doors for a week; and then they would go on 
just as before, only they wouldn’t be on such good 
terms with the wolf. The only way for them is to 
keep up an unbroken intimacy with the wolf; then 
they can manage him somehow. I don’t know how, 
and I’m afraid I don’t want to. Wouldn’t you like 
to have this fellow drive us round among the halls 
of pride somewhere for a little while? Fifth 
Avenue or Madison, uptown?” 

““No; we’ve no time to waste. Dve got a place 
near Third Avenue, on a nice cross street, and I 
It proved that she 
had several addresses near together, and it seemed 
best to dismiss their coupé and do the rest of their — 
afternoon’s work on foot. It came to nothing; she 
was not humbled in the least by what she had seen 
in the tenement-house street; she yielded no point 
in her ideal of a flat, and the flats persistently re- 
fused to lend themselves to it. She lost all patience 
with them. 

“Oh, I don’t say the flats are in the right of it,” 
said her husband, when she denounced their stupid 
inadequacy to the purposes of a Christian home. 
“ But I’m not so sure that we areeither. I’ve been 
thinking about-that home business ever since my 
sensibilities were dragged—in a coupé—through 
that tenement-house street. Of course no child born 
and brought up in such a place as that could have 
any conception of home. But that’s because those 
poor people can’t give character to their habitations. 
They have to take what they can get. But people 
like us—that is, of our means—do give character 
to the average flat. It’s made to meet their tastes, 
or their supposed tastes; and so it’s made for social 
show, not for family life at all. Think of a baby in 
a flat! It’s a contradiction in terms: the flat is the 
negation of motherhood. The flat means society 
life; that is, the pretence of social life. It’s made to 
give artificial people a society basis on a little mo- 
ney—too much money, of course, for what they get. 


a2 


So the cost of the building is put into marble halls 
and idiotic decoration of all kinds. I don’t object 
to the conveniences, but none of these flats have a 
living-room. They have drawing-rooms to foster 
social pretence, and they have dining-rooms and 
bedrooms; but they have no room where the family 
can all come together and feel the sweetness of be- 
ing afamily. The bedrooms are black holes mostly, 
with a sinful waste of space in each. If it were not 
for the marble halls, and the decorations, and the 
foolishly expensive finish, the houses could be built 
round a court, and the flats could be shaped some- 
thing like a Pompeiian house, with small sleeping- 
closets—only lit from the outside—and the rest of the 
floor thrown into two or three large cheerful halls, 
where all the family life could go on, and society 
could be transacted unpretentiously. Why, those 


Nornine mystifies a man more than a woman’s 
aberrations from some point at which he supposes 
her fixed as a star. In these unfurnished houses, 
without steam or elevator, March followed his wife 
about with patient wonder. She rather liked the 
worst of them best; but she made him go down 
into the cellars and look at the furnaces; she ex- 
acted from him a rigid inquest of the plumbing. 
She followed him into one of the cellars by the fitful 
glare of successively lighted matches, and they en- 
joyed a moment in which the anomaly of their 
presence there on that errand, so remote from all 
the facts of their long-stablished life in Boston, 
realized itself for them. 

“Think how easily we might have been murder- 
ed, and nobody been any the wiser!” she said when 
they were comfortably out-doors again. 

“Yes, or made way with ourselves in an access of 
emotional insanity, supposed to have been induced 
by unavailing flat-hunting,” he suggested. 

She fell in with the notion. “I’m beginning to 
feel crazy. But I don’t want you to lose your head, 
Basil. And I don’t want you to sentimentalize 
any of the things you see in New York. I think 
you were disposed to do it in that street we drove 
through. I don’t believe there’s any real suffering 
—not real suffering—among those people ; that is, 
it would be suffering from our point of view, but 


they’ve been used to it all their lives, and they don’t: 


feel their discomfort so much.” 

“‘Of course I understand that, and I don’t propose 
to sentimentalize them. I think when people get 
used to a bad state of things they had better stick 
to it; in fact they don’t usually like a better state 
so well, and I shall keep that firmly in mind.” 

She laughed with him, and they walked along the 
L-bestridden avenue, exhilarated by their escape 


A Hazard of New fortunes. 


tenements are better and humaner than these flats ! 
There the whole family lives in the kitchen, and has 
its consciousness of being; but the flat abolishes 
the family consciousness. It’s confinement without 
coziness ; it’s cluttered without being snug. You 
couldn’t keep a self-respecting cat in a flat; you 
couldn’t go down cellar to get cider. No: the 
Anglo-Saxon home, as we know it in the Anglo- 
Saxon house, is simply impossible in the Franco- 
American flat—not because it’s humble, but because 
it’s false.” 

“ Well, then,” said Mrs. March, “let’s look at 
houses.” 

He had been denouncing the flat in the ab- 
stract, and he had not expected this concrete re- 
sult. But he said, ““We will look at houses, 
then.” 


from murder and suicide in that cellar, toward the 
nearest cross-town track, which they meant to take 
home to their hotel. ‘ Now to-night we will go to 
the theatre,” she said, “and get this whole house 
business out of our minds, and be perfectly fresh 
for a new start in the morning.” Suddenly she 
clutched his arm. ‘‘ Why, did you see that man?” 
and she signed with her head toward a decently 
dressed person who walked beside them, next the 
gutter, stooping over as if to examine it, and half 
halting at times. 

“No. What?” 

‘Why, I saw him pick up a dirty bit of cracker 
from the pavement and cram it into his mouth and 
eat it down as if he were famished. And look! 
he’s actually hunting for more in those garbage 
heaps!” 

This was what the decent-looking man with the 
hard hands and broken nails of a workman was 
doing—like a hungry dog. They kept up with him, 
in the fascination of the sight, to the next corner, 
where he turned down the side street, still searching 
the gutter. 

They walked on a few paces. Then March said, 
“T must go after him,” and left his wife standing, 

“ Are you in want—hungry ?” he asked the man. 

The man said he could not speak English, mon- 
sieur. 

March asked his question in French. 

The man shrugged a pitiful, desperate shrug. 
“ Mais, monsieur—”’ 

March put a coin in his hand, and then suddenly 
the man’s face twisted up; he caught the hand of 
this alms-giver in both of his, and clung to it. 
“Monsieur! monsieur!” he gasped, and the tears 
rained down his face. 

His benefactor pulled himself away, shocked and 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 23 


ashamed, as one is by such a chance, and got back 
to his wife; and the man lapsed back into the mys- 
tery of misery out of which he had emerged. 

March felt it laid upon him to console his wife for 
what had happened. ‘Of course we might live 
here for years and not see another case like that; 
and of course there are twenty places where he could 
have gone for help if he had known where to find 
them.” oo 

“Ah, but it’s the possibility of his needing the 
help so badly as that!” she answered. “ That’s 
what I can’t bear, and I shall not come to a place 
where such things are possible, and we may as well 
stop our house-hunting here at once.” 

“Yes? And what part of Christendom will you 
live in? Such things are possible everywhere in 
our conditions.” 

‘‘Then we must change the conditions.” 

“Oh no; we must go to the theatre and forget 
them. Wecan stop at Brentano’s for our tickets as 
we pass through Union Square.” 

“T am not going to the theatre, Basil. I am 
going home. to Boston to-night. You can stay and 
find a flat.” 

He convinced her of the absurdity of her position, 
and even of its selfishness; but she said that her 
mind was quite made up irrespective of what had 
happened; that she had been away from the chil- 
dren long enough; that she ought to be at home 
to finish up the work of leaving it. The word 
brought a sigh. ‘‘Ah,I don’t know why we should 
see nothing but sad and ugly things now. When 
we were young—” 

“Younger,” he putin. ‘ We're still young.” 

“That’s what we pretend, but we know better. 
But I was thinking how pretty and pleasant things 
used to be turning up all the time on our travels 
in the old days. Why, when we were in New York 
here on our wedding journey the place didn’t seem 
half so dirty as it does now, and none of these dismal 
things happened.” 

“Tt was a good deal dirtier,” he answered; “and 
I fancy worse in every way—hungrier, raggeder, 
more wretchedly housed. But that wasn’t the pe- 
riod of life for us to notice it. Don’t you remember, 
when we started to Niagara the last time, how 
everybody seemed middle-aged and commonplace ; 
and when we got there there were no evident brides; 
nothing but elderly married people ?” 

“ At least they weren’t starving,” she rebelled. 

“No; you don’t starve in parlor cars and first- 
class hotels; but if you step out of them you run 
your chance of seeing those who do, if you’re getting 
on pretty well in the forties. If it’s the unhappy 
who see unhappiness, think what misery must be 
revealed to people who pass their lives in the 
really squalid tenement-house streets—I don’t mean 
picturesque avenues like that we passed through.” 

“But we are not unhappy,” she protested, bring- 


ing the talk back to the personal base again, as 
women must to get any good out of talk. ‘“ We’re 
really no unhappier than we were when we were 
young.” 

“We're more serious.” 

“ Well, I hate it; and I wish you wouldnt be so 
serious, if that’s what it brings us to.” 

“T will be trivial from this on,” said March. 
“Shall we go to the Hole in the Ground to-night ?” 

“T am going to Boston.” 

“It?s much the same thing. How do you like 
that for triviality? It’s a little blasphemous, I'll 
allow.” 

“‘Tt’s very silly,” she said. 

At the hotel they found a letter from the agent 
who had sent them the permit to see Mrs. Gros- 
venor Green’s apartment. He wrote that she had 
heard they were pleased with her apartment, and that 
she thought she could make the terms to suit. She 
had taken her passage for Europe, and was very 
anxious to let the flat before she sailed. She 
would call that evening at seven. 

“Mrs. Grosvenor Green!’ said Mrs. March. 
“Which of the ten thousand flats is it, Basil ?” 

“The gimcrackery,” he answered. “In the 
Xenophon, you know.” | 

‘Well, she may save herself the trouble. I 
shall not see her. Or, yes—I'must. I cowldn’t go 
away without seeing what sort of creature could 
have planned that fly-away flat. She must be a per- 
fect—” 

“Parachute,” March suggested. 

““No: anybody so light as that couldn’t come 
down.” 

“Well, toy balloon.” 

“Toy balloon will do for the present,” Mrs. 
March admitted. ‘ But I feel that naught but her- 
self can be her parallel for volatility.” 

When Mrs. Grosvenor Green’s card came up, they 
both descended to the hotel parlor, which March 
said looked like the saloon of a Moorish day boat; 
not that he knew of any such craft, but the decora- 
tions were so Saracenic and the architecture so Hud- 
son Riverish. They found there on the grand cen- 
tral divan a large lady, whose vast smoothness, 
placidity, and plumpness set at defiance all their 
preconceptions of Mrs. Grosvenor Green, so that 
Mrs. March distinctly paused with her card in her 
hand before venturing even tentatively to address 
her. Then she was astonished at the low calm voice 
in which Mrs. Green acknowledged herself, and slow- 
ly proceeded to apologize for calling. It was not 
quite true that she had taken her passage for Europe, 
but she hoped soon to do so, and she confessed that 
in the mean time she was anxious to let her flat. She 
was a little worn out with the care of house-keep- 
ing—Mrs. March breathed, “Oh yes!” in the sigh 
with which ladies recognize one another’s martyrdom 
—and Mr. Green had business abroad, and she was 


24 


going to pursue her art studies in Paris; she drew 
in Mr. Ilcomb’s class now, but the instruction was so 
much better in Paris; and as the Superintendent 
seemed to think the price was the only objection, 
she had ventured to call. 

“Then we didn’t deceive him in the least,” 
thought Mrs. March, while she answered, sweetly: 
‘““‘No; we were only afraid that it would be too 
small for our family. We require a good many 
rooms.” She could not forego the opportunity of 
saying, “My husband is coming to New York to 
take charge of a literary periodical, and he will 
have to have a room to write in,” which made Mrs. 
Green bow to March, and made March look sheep- 
ish. ‘But we did think the apartment very charm- 
ing” (“Tt was architecturally charming,” she pro- 
tested to her conscience), “and we should have been 
so glad if we could have got into it.” She follow- 
ed this with some account of their house-hunting, 
amid soft murmurs of sympathy from Mrs. Green, 
who said that she had been through all that, and 
that if she could have shown her apartment to them 
she felt sure that she could have explained it so 
that they would have seen its capabilities better. 
Mrs. March assented to this, and Mrs. Green added 
that if they found nothing exactly suitable she would 
be glad to have them look at it again; and then 
Mrs. March said that she was going back to Boston 
herself, but she was leaving Mr. March to continue 
the search, and she had no doubt he would be 
only too glad to see the apartment by daylight. 
“But if you take it, Basil,” she warned him, when 
they were alone, “TI shall simply renounce you. I 
wouldn’t live in that junk-shop if you gave it to me. 
But who would have thought she was that kind of 
looking person? Though of course I might have 
known if I had stopped to think once. It’s because 
the place doesn’t express her at all that it’s so unlike 
her. It couldn’t be like anybody, or anything that 
flies in the air, or creeps upon the earth, or swims 
in the waters under the earth. I wonder where in 
the world she’s from? She’s no N ew-Yorker; even 
we can see that; and she’s not quite a country 
person either; she seems like a person from some 
Jarge town, where she’s been an esthetic authority. 
And she can’t find good enough art instruction in 
New York, and has to go to Paris for it! Well, it’s 
pathetic, after all, Basil. I can’t help feeling sorry 
for a person who mistakes herself to that extent,” 

“T can’t help feeling sorry for the husband of a 
person who mistakes herself to that extent. What 
is Mr, Grosvenor Green going to do in Paris while 
she’s working her way into the Salon ?” 

“Well, you keep away from her apartment, 
Basil; that’s all I’ve got to say to you. And yet I 
do like some things about her.” 

“T like everything about her but her apartment,” 
said March. 

“T like her going to be out of the country,” said 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


his wife. ‘We shouldn’t be overlooked. And the 
place was prettily shaped; you can’t deny it. And 
there was an elevator and steam heat. And the 
location és very convenient. And there was a hall 
boy to bring up cards. The halls and stairs were 
kept very clean and nice. But it wouldn’t do. I 
could put you a folding-bed in the room where you 
wrote, and we could even have one in the parlor—” 

“Behind a portiére? I couldn’t stand any more: 
portiéres !”” 

“And we could squeeze the two girls into one: 
room, or perhaps only bring Margaret, and put out 
the whole of the wash. Basil!’ she almost shriek- 
ed, “it isn’t to be thought of !” 

He retorted, “ I’m not thinking of it, my dear.” 

Fulkerson came in just before they started for 
Mrs. March’s train, to find out what had become of 
them, he said, and to see whether they had got any- 
thing to live in yet. 

“Not a thing,” she said. “And I’m just going 
back to Boston, and leaving Mr. March here to do 
anything he pleases about it. He has carte blanche.” 

“But freedom brings responsibility, you know, 
Fulkerson, and it’s the same as if I’d no choice. 
I’m staying behind because I’m left, not because I 
expect to do anything.” 

“Is that so?” asked Fulkerson. “ Well, we 
must see what can be done. I supposed you would 
be all settled by this time, or I should have humped 
myself to find you something. None of those 
places I gave you amount to anything ?” 

‘As much as forty thousand others we’ve looked 
at,” said Mrs. March. “Yes, one of them does 
amount to something. It comes so near being 
what we want that I’ve given Mr. March particular 
instructions not to go near it.” 

She told him about Mrs. Grosvenor Green and 
her flat, and at the end he said: 

‘Well, well, we must look out for that. Tl 
keep an eye on him, Mrs. March, and see that he 
doesn’t do anything rash, and I won’t leave him till 
he’s found just the right thing. It exists, of course ; 
it must in a city of eighteen hundred thousand 
people, and the only question is, where to find it. 
You leave him to me, Mrs. March; I'll watch out for 
him.” 

Fulkerson showed some signs of going to the 
station when he found they were not driving, but she 
bade him a peremptory good-by at the hotel door. 

‘He’s very nice, Basil, and his way with you is 
perfectly charming. It’s very sweet to see how 
really fond of you he is. But I didn’t want him 
stringing along up to Forty-second Street with us, 
and spoiling our last moments together.” 

At Third Avenue they took the elevated, for 
which she confessed an infatuation. She declared” 
it the most ideal way of getting about in the world, 
and was not ashamed when he reminded her of. 
how she used to say that nothing under the sun 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


could induce her to travel on it. She now said 
that the night transit was even more interesting 
than the day, and that the fleeting intimacy you 
formed with people in second and third floor in- 
teriors, while all the usual street life went on under- 
neath, had a domestic intensity mixed with a perfect 
repose that was the last effect of good society with 
all its security and exclusiveness. He said it was 
better than the theatre, of which it reminded him, to 
see those people through their windows: a family 
party of work-folk at a late tea, some of the men 
in their shirt sleeves; a woman sewing by a lamp; 
a mother laying her child in its cradle; a man with 
his head fallen on his hands upon a table; a girl 
and her lover leaning over the window-sill together. 
What suggestion! what drama! what infinite in- 
terest! At the Forty-second Street station they 
stopped a minute on the bridge that crosses the 
track to the branch road for the Central Depot, and 
looked up and down the long stretch of the eleva- 
ted to north and south. The track that found and 
lost itself a thousand times in the flare and tremor 
of the innumerable lights; the moony sheen of the 
electrics mixing with the reddish points and blots 
of gas far and near; the architectural shapes of 
houses and churches and towers, rescued by the 
obscurity from all that was ignoble in them, and the 
coming and going of the trains marking the stations 
with vivider or fainter plumes of flame-shot steam 
—formed an incomparable perspective. They often 
talked afterward of the superb spectacle, which in 
a city full of painters nightly works its unrecorded 
miracles; and they were just to the Arachne roof 


25 


spun in iron over the cross street on which they ran: 
to the depot; but for the present they were mostly 
inarticulate before it. They had another moment of 
rich silence when they paused in the gallery that 
leads from the elevated station to the waiting-rooms. 
in the Central Depot and looked down upon the 
great night trains lying on the tracks dim under 
the rain of gas-lights that starred without dispersing 
the vast darkness of the place. What forces, what 
fates, slept in these bulks which would soon be: 
hurling themselves north and east and west through 
the night! Now they waited there like fabled mon- 
sters of Arab story ready for the magician’s touch, 
tractable, reckless, will-less—organized lifelessness 
full of a strange semblance of life. 

The Marches admired the impressive sight with a 
thrill of patriotic pride in the fact that the whole 
world perhaps could not afford just the like. Then 
they hurried down to the ticket offices, and he got 
her a lower berth in the Boston sleeper, and went 
with her to the car. They made the most of the 
fact that her berth was in the very middle of the 
car; and she promised to write as soon as she reach- 
ed home. She promised also that having seen the 
limitations of New York in respect to flats, she 
would not be hard on him if he took something 
not quite ideal. Only he must remember that it 
was not to be above Twentieth Street nor below 
Washington Square; it must not be higher than 
the third floor; it must. have an elevator, steam 
heat, hall boy, and a pleasant janitor. These were: 
essentials; if he could not get them, then they must 
do without. But he must get them. 


XI. 


Mrs. Marcu was one of those wives who exact a 
more rigid adherence to their ideals from their hus- 
bands than from themselves. Early in their married 
life she had taken ‘charge of him in all matters 
which she considered practical. She did not include 
the business of bread-winning in these; that was 
an affair that might safely be left to his absent- 
minded, dreamy inefficiency, and she did not inter- 
fere with him there. But in such things as rehang- 
ing the pictures, deciding on a summer boarding- 
place, taking a sea-side cottage, repapering rooms, 
choosing seats at the theatre, seeing what the chil- 
dren ate when she was not at table, shutting the 
cat out at night, keeping run of calls and invita- 
tions, and seeing if the furnace was dampened, he 
had failed her so often that she felt she could not 
leave him the slightest discretion in regard to a flat. 
Her total distrust of his judgment in the matters 
cited and others like them consisted with the great- 
est admiration of his mind and respect for his 
character. She often said that if he would only 


bring these to bear in such exigencies he would be: 
simply perfect; but she had long given up his ever 
doing so. She subjected him, therefore, to an iron 
code, but after proclaiming it she was apt to aban- 
don him to the native lawlessness of his tempera- 
ment. She expected him in this event to do as he 
pleased, and she resigned herself to it with con- 
siderable comfort in holding him accountable. He 
learned to expect this, and after suffering keenly 
from her disappointment with whatever he did, he 
waited patiently till she forgot her grievance and be- 
gan to extract what consolation lurks in the irrep- 
arable. She would almost admit at moments that 
what he had done was a very good thing, but. she 
reserved the right to return in full force to her ori- 
ginal condemnation of it; and she accumulated each 
act of independent volition in witness and warning 
against him. Their mass oppressed but never de- 
terred him. He expected to do the wrong thing 
when left to his own devices, and he did it without 
any apparent recollection of his former misdeeds: 


26 A Hazard of 


and their consequences. There was a good deal of 
comedy in it all, and some tragedy. 

He now experienced a certain expansion, such as 
husbands of his kind will imagine, on going back 
to his hotel alone. It was, perhaps, a revulsion from 
the pain of parting; and he toyed with the idea of 
Mrs. Grosvenor Green’s apartment, which, in its pre- 
posterous unsuitability, had a strange attraction. 
He felt that he could take it with less risk than any- 
thing else they had seen, but he said he would look 
at all the other places in town first. He really 
spent the greater part of the next day in hunting 
up the owner of an apartment that had neither 
steam heat nor an elevator, but was otherwise per- 
fect, and trying to get him to take less than the agent 
asked. By a curious pyschical operation he was 
able, in the transaction, to work himself into quite 
@ passionate desire for the apartment, while he 
held the Grosvenor Green apartment in the back- 
ground of his mind as something that he could return 
to as altogether more suitable. He conducted some 
simultaneous negotiation for a furnished house, 
which enhanced still more the desirability of the 
‘Grosvenor Green apartment. Toward evening he 
went off at a tangent far uptown, so as to be able 
to tell his wife how utterly preposterous the best 
there would be as compared even with this ridicu- 
Jous Grosvenor Green gimerackery. It is hard to 
report the processes of his sophistication ; perhaps 
this, again, may best be left to the marital imagina- 
tion. 

He rang at the last of these uptown apartments 
as it was falling dusk, and it was long before the 
janitor appeared. Then the man was very surly, 
and said if he looked at the flat now he would 
Say it was too dark, like all the rest. His reluc- 
tance irritated March in proportion to his insincerity 
in proposing to look at it at all. He knew he did 
not mean to take it under any circumstances; that 
he was going to use his inspection of it in dishonest 
justification of his disobedience to his wife; but he 
put on an air of offended dignity. “If you don’t 
wish to show the apartment,” he said, “I don’t care 
to see it.” 

The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt 
dreaded the stairs. He scratched a match on his 
thigh, and led the way up. March was sorry for 
him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his waist- 
coat pocket to give him at parting. At the same 
time he had to trump up an objection to the flat. 
This was easy, for it was advertised as containing 
ten rooms, and he found the number eked out with 
the bath-room and two large closets. “It’s light 
enough,” said March, “but I don’t see how you 
make out ten rooms.” 

“There’s ten rooms,” said the man, deigning no 
proof. 

March took his fingers off the quarter, and went 
down-stairs and out of the door without another 


New Fortunes. 


word. It would be wrong, it would be impossible, 
to give the man anything after such insolence. He 
reflected, with shame, that it was also cheaper to 
punish than forgive him. . 

He returned to his hotel prepared for any des- 
perate measure, and convinced now that the Gros- 
venor Green apartment was not merely the only 
thing left for him, but was, on its own merits, the 
best thing in New York. 

Fulkerson was waiting for him in the reading- 
room, and it gave March the curious thrill with 
which a man closes with temptation when he said: 
‘Look here! Why don’t you take that woman’s 
flat in the Xenophon? She’s been at the agents 
again, and they’ve been at me. She likes your looks 
—or Mrs. March’s—and I guess you can have it at 
a pretty heavy discount from the original price. I’m 
authorized to say you can have it for one seventy- 
five a month, and I don’t believe it would be safe 
for you to offer one fifty.” 

March shook his head, and dropped a mask of vir- 
tuous rejection over his corrupt acquiescence. “It’s 
too small for us—we couldn’t squeeze into it.” 

“Why, look here!” Fulkerson persisted. “How 
many rooms do you people want ?” 

“Tve got to have a place to work—” 

“Of course! And you’ve got to have it at the 
Fifth Wheel office.” 

“I hadn’t thought of that,” March began. “TI 
suppose I could do my work at the office, as there’s 
not much writing—”’ 

“Why, of course you can’t do your work at home. 
You just come round with me now, and look at that 
flat again.” 

“No; I can’t do it.” 

iTS Why 2” 

“I—T’ve got to dine.” 

“All right,” said Fulkerson. “Dine with me. 
I want to take you round to a little Italian place 
that I know.” 

One may trace the successive steps of March’s 
course in this simple matter with the same edifica- 
tion that would attend the study of the self-delu- 
sions and obfuscations of a man tempted to crime. 
The process is probably not at all different, and to 
the philosophical mind the kind of result is unim- 
portant; the process is everything, 

Fulkerson led him down one block and half 
across another to the steps of a small dwelling- 
house, transformed, like many others, into a restau- 
rant of the Latin ideal, with little or no structural 
change from the pattern of the lower middle-class 
New York home. There were the corroded brown- 
Stone steps, the mean little front door, and the 
cramped entry with its narrow stairs by which 
ladies could go up toa dining-room appointed for 
them on the second floor; the parlors on the first 
were set about with tables, where men smoked 
cigarettes between the courses, and a single waiter 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


. wan swiftly to and fro with plates and dishes, and 
exchanged unintelligible outcries with a cook be- 
yond a slide in the back parlor. He rushed at the 
new-comers, brushed the soiled table-cloth before 
them with a towel on his arm, covered its worst 
stains with a napkin, and brought them, in their 
order, the vermicelli soup, the fried fish, the cheese- 
strewn spaghetti, the veal-cutlets, the tepid roast 
fowl and salad, and the wizened pear and Swiss 
cheese and coffee, which form the dinner at such 
places. 

“ Ah, this is nice/” said Fulkerson, after the lay- 
ing of the charitable napkin, and he began to recog- 
mize acquaintances, some of whom he described to 
March as young literary men and artists with whom 
they should probably have to do; others were sim- 
ply frequenters of the place, and were of all nation- 
alities and religions apparently—at least, several 
were Hebrews and Cubans. “You get a pretty 
good slice of New York here,” he said, ‘‘all except 
the frosting on top. That you won’t find much at 
Maroni’s, though you will occasionally. Idon’t mean 
the ladies ever, of course.” The ladies present 
seemed harmless and reputable looking people 
enough, but certainly they were not of the first fash- 
ion, and, except in a few instances, not Americans. 
“Tis like cutting straight down through a fruit 
eake,” Fulkerson went on, “or a mince-pie, when 
you don’t know who made the pie; you get a little 
of everything.” He ordered a small flask of Chianti 
with the dinner, and it came in its pretty wicker 
jacket. March smiled upon it with tender reminis- 
cence, and Fulkerson laughed. “Lights you up a 
little. I brought old Dryfoos here one day, and he 
thought it was sweet-oil; that’s the kind of bottle 
they used to have it in at the country drug- 
stores.” 

“Yes, I remember now; but I'd totally forgotten 
it,” said March. “How far back that goes! 
Who’s Dryfoos ?” 

“Dryfoos?” Fulkerson, still smiling, tore off a 
piece of the half-yard of French loaf which had 
been supplied them, with two pale, thin disks of but- 
ter, and fed it into himself. “‘ Old Dryfoos ? Well, 
of course! I call him old, but he ain’t so very. 
About fifty, or along there.” 

“No,” said March, “that isn’t very old—or not 
so old as it used to be.” 

“ Well, I suppose you’ve got to know about him, 
anyway,” said Fulkerson, thoughtfully. “ And [I’ve 
been wondering just how I should tell you. Can’t 
always make out exactly how much of a Bostonian 
you really are! Ever been out in the natural gas 
country ?” 

“No,” said March. “I’ve had a good deal of 
curiosity about it, but Pve never been able to get 
away except in summer, and then we always pre- 
ferred to go over the old ground, out to Niagara 

and back through Canada, the route we took on our 


27 


wedding journey. The children like it as much as 
we do.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said Fulkerson, “ Well, the natural 
gas country is worth seeing. I don’t mean the 
Pittsburg gas fields, but out in northern Ohio and 
Indiana around Moffitt—that’s the place in the heart 
of the gas region that they’ve been booming so. 
Yes, you ought to see that country. If you haven’t 
been West for a good many years, you haven’t got 
any idea how old the country looks. You remember 
how. the fields used to be all full of stumps ?” 

“T should think so.” 

“Well, you won’t see any stumps now. All that 
country out around Moffitt is just as smooth as a 
checker-board, and looks as old as England. You 
know how we used to burn the stumps out; and 
then somebody invented a stump-extractor, and we 
pulled them out with a yoke of oxen. Now they 
just touch ’em off with a little dynamite, and they’ve 
got a cellar dug and filled up with kindling ready 
for house-keeping whenever you want it. Only they 
haven’t got any use for kindling in that country— 
all gas. I rode along on the cars through those 
level black fields at corn-planting time, and every 
once in a while I’d come to a place with a piece of 
ragged old stove-pipe stickin’ up out of the ground, 
and blazing away like forty, and a fellow. ploughing 
all round it and not minding it any more than if 
it was spring violets. Horses didn’t notice it either. 
Well, they’ve always known about the gas out 
there; they say there are places in the woods where 
it’s been burning ever since the country was settled. 

“But when you come in sight of Moffitt—my, oh 
my! Well, you come in smell of it about as soon. 
That gas out there ain’t odorless, like the Pittsburg 
gas, and so it’s perfectly safe; but the smell isn’t 
bad—about as bad as the finest kind of benzine. 
Well, the first thing that strikes you when you come 
to Moffitt is the notion that there’s been a good 
warm, growing rain, and the town’s come up over- 
night. That’s in the suburbs, the annexes, and 
additions. But it ain’t shabby—no shanty-town 
business; nice brick and frame houses, some of ’em 
Queen Anne style, and all of ’em looking as if they 
had come to stay. And when you drive up from 
the depot you think everybody’s moving. Everything 
seems to be piled into the street; old houses made 
over, and new ones going up everywhere. You 
know the kind of street Main Street always used to 
be in our section—half plank-road and turnpike, 
and the rest mud-hole, and a lot of stores and dogger- 
ies strung along with false fronts a story higher 
than the back, and here and there a decent building 
with the gable end to the public; and a court-house 
and jail and two taverns and three or four churches. 
Well, they’re all there in Moffitt yet, but architecture 
has struck it hard, and they’ve got a lot of new 
buildings that needn’t be ashamed of themselves 
anywhere; the new court-house is as big as St. 


28 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Peter’s, and the Grand Opera-house is in the highest 
style of the art. You can’t buy a lot on that street 
for much less than you can buy a lot in New York 
—or you couldn’t when the boom was on: I saw 
the place just when the boom was in its prime. 
I went out there to work the newspapers in the 
syndicate business, and I got one of their men to write 
me a real bright, snappy account of the gas; and 
they just took me in their arms and showed me 
everything. Well, it was wonderful, and it was beau- 
tifultoo! To see a whole community stirred up like 
that was—just like a big boy, all hope and high 
spirits, and no discount on the remotest future; no- 
thing but perpetual boom to the end of time—I 
tell you it warmed your blood. Why, there were 
some things about it that made you think what a 
nice kind of world this would be if people ever 
took hold together, instead of each fellow fighting 
it out on his own hook, and devil take the hind- 
most. They made up their minds at Moffitt that if 
they wanted their town to grow they’d got to keep 
their gas public property. So they extended their 
corporation line so as to take in pretty much the 
whole gas region round there; and then the city 
took possession of every well that was put down, 
and held it for the common good. Anybody that’s 
a mind to come to Moffitt and start any kind of 
manufacture can have all the gas he wants /ree ; 
and for fifteen dollars a year you can have all the 
gas you want to heat and light your private house. 
The people hold on to it for themselves, and, as I 
say, it’s a grand sight to see a whole community 
hanging together and working for the good of all, 
instead of splitting up into as many different cut- 
throats as there are able-bodied citizens. See that 
fellow?” Fulkerson broke off, and indicated with 
a twirl of his head a short, dark, foreign-looking 
man going out of the door. ‘They say that fellow’s 
a Socialist. I think it’s a shame they’re allowed to 
come here. If they don’t like the way we manage 
our affairs, let ’em stay at home,” Fulkerson con- 
tinued. “They do a lot of mischief, shooting off 
their mouths round here. I believe in free speech 
and all that, but I’d like to see those fellows shut up 
in jail and left to jaw each other to death. We don’t 
want any of their poison.” 

March did not notice the vanishing Socialist. He 
was watching, with a teasing sense of familiarity, a 
tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, who had just 
come in. He had the aquiline profile uncommon 
among Germans, and yet March recognized him at 
onceasGerman. His long, soft beard and mustache 
had once been fair, and they kept some tone of their 
yellow in the gray to which they had turned. His 
eyes were full, and his lips and chin shaped the beard 
to the noble outline which shows in the beards the 
Italian masters liked to paint for their Last Sup- 
pers. His carriage was erect and soldierly, and 
March presently saw that he had lost his left hand. 


He took his place at a table where the overworked 
waiter found time to cut up his meat, and put every- 
thing in easy reach of his right hand. 

‘“ Well,” Fulkerson resumed, “ they took me round 
everywhere in Moffitt, and showed me their big wells 
—lit ’em up for a private view, and let me hear 
them purr with the soft accents of a mass-meeting 
of locomotives. Why, when they let one of these 
wells loose in a meadow that they’d piped it into 
temporarily, it drove the flame away forty feet from 
the mouth of the pipe and blew it over half an acre 
of ground. They say when they let one of their 
big wells burn away all winter before they had 
learned how to control it, that well kept up a little 
Summer all around it; the grass staid green, and 
the flowers bloomed all through the winter. J don’t 
know whether it’s soornot. But I can believe any- 
thing of natural gas. My! but it was beautiful 
when they turned on the full force of that well and 
shot a Roman-candle into the gas—that’s the way 
they light it—and a plume of fire about twenty feet 
wide and seventy-five feet high, all red and yellow 
and violet, jumped into the sky, and that big roar 
shook the ground under your feet! You felt like 
saying, ‘Don’t trouble yourself; I’m perfectly con- 
vinced.’ I believe in Moffitt. We-e-e-ll! drawled 
Fulkerson, with a long breath, “ that’s where I met 
old Dryfoos.” 

“Oh yes!—Dryfoos,” said March. He observed 
that the waiter had brought the old one-handed 
German a towering glass of beer. 

“Yes,” Fulkerson laughed. “ We’ve got round to 
Dryfoos again. I thought I could cut a long story 
short, but I seem to be cutting a short story long. 
If you’re not in a hurry, though—” 

‘Not in the least. Go on as long as you like.” 

“TI met him there in the office of a real-estate 
man—speculator, of course ; everybody was, in Mof- 
fitt; but a first-rate fellow, and public spirited as all 
get-out; and when Dryfoos left he told me about 
him. Dryfoos was an old Pennsylvania Dutch farm- 
er, about three or four miles out of Moffitt, and he’d 
lived there pretty much all his life; father was one 


of the first settlers. Everybody knew he had the. 


right stuff in him, but he was slower than molasses 
in January, like those Pennsylvania Dutch. He’d 
got together the largest and handsomest farm any- 
where around there; and he was making money on 
it, just like he was in some business somewhere ; 
he was a very intelligent man; he took the papers: 
and kept himself posted; but he was awfully old- 
fashioned in his ideas. He hung on to the doctrines 
as well as the dollars of the dads; it was a real 
thing with him. Well, when the boom began to 
come he hated it awfully, and he fought it. He used 
to write communications to the weekly newspaper: 
in Moffitt—they’ve got three dailies there now—and 
throw cold water on the boom. He couldn’t catch 
on noway. It made him sick to hear the clack that 


i 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 29 


went on about the gas the whole while, and that 
stirred up the neighborhood and got into his family. 
Whenever he’d hear of a man that had been offered 
a big price for his land and was going to sell out 
and move into town, he’d go and labor with him 
and try to talk him out of it, and tell him how long 
his fifteen or twenty thousand would last him to live 
‘on, and shake the Standard Oil Company before him, 
and try to make him believe it wouldn’t be five 
years before the Standard owned’ the whole region. 

“Of course he couldn’t do anything with them. 
When a man’s offered a big price for his farm, he 
don’t care whether it’s by a secret emissary from 
the Standard Oil or not; he’s going to sell, and get 
the better of the other fellow if he can. Dryfoos 
couldn’t keep the boom out of his own family, even. 
His wife was with him. She thought whatever he 
said and did was just as right as if it had been 
thundered down from Sinai. But the young folks 
were sceptical, especially the girls that had been 
away to school. The boy that had been kept at 
home because he couldn’t be spared from helping 
his father manage the farm was more like him, but 
‘they contrived to stir the boy up with the hot end 
‘of the boom too. So when a fellow came along one 
day and offered old Dryfoos a cool hundred thou- 
‘sand for his farm, it was all up with Dryfoos. He’d 
’a liked to ’a kept the offer to himself and not 
done anything about it, but his vanity wouldn’t let 
him do that; and when he let it out in his family, 
the girls outvoted him. They just made him sell. 

“He wouldn’t sell all. He kept about eighty 
acres that was off in one piece by itself, but the 
three hundred that had the old brick house on it, 
and the big barn—that went, and Dryfoos bought 
him a place in Moffitt, and moved into town to 
live on the interest of his money. Just what he 
had scolded and ridiculed everybody else for doing. 
Well, they say that at first he seemed like he would 
go crazy. He hadn’t anything to do. He took a 
fancy to that land-agent, and he used to go and set 
in his office and ask him what he should do. ‘I 
hain’t got any horses, I hain’t got any cows, I hain’t 
got any pigs, { hain’t got any chickens. I hain’t 
got anything to do from sunup to sundown.’ The 
fellow said the tears used to run down the old fel- 
-low’s cheeks, and if he hadn’t been so busy him- 
self he believed he should ’a cried too. But most 
o’ people thought old Dryfoos was down in the 
mouth because he hadn’t asked more for his farm, 
when he wanted to buy it back and found they held 
it at a hundred and fifty thousand. People couldn’t 
believe he was just homesick and heartsick for the 
old place. Well, perhaps he was sorry he hadn’t 
asked more; that’s human nature too. 

“ After a while something happened. That land- 
agent used to tell Dryfoos to get out to Europe with 
his money and see life a little, or go and live in 
Washington, where he could be somebody; but Dry- 


foos wouldn’t, and he kept listening to the talk 
there, and all of a sudden he caught on. He 
came into that fellow’s one day with a plan for 
cutting up the eighty acres he’d kept into town lots; 
and he’d got it all plotted out so well, and had 
so many practical ideas about it, that the fellow 
was astonished. He went right in with him, as far 
as Dryfoos would let him, and glad of the chance; 
and they were working the thing for all it was 
worth when I struck Moffitt. Old Dryfoos wanted 
me to go out and see the Dryfoos & Hendry Addi- 
tion—guess he thought maybe Id write it up; and 
he drove me out there himself. Well, it was funny 
to see a town made: streets driven through; two 
rows of shade trees, hard and soft, planted; cellars 
dug and houses put up—regular Queen Anne style 
too, with stained glass—all at once. Dryfoos apolo- 
gized for the streets because they were hand-made; 
said they expected their street-making machine Tues- 
day, and then they intended to push things.” 

Fulkerson enjoyed the effect of his picture on 
March for a moment, and then went on: ‘He was 
mighty intelligent too, and he questioned me up about 
my business as sharp as J ever was questioned ; 
seemed to kind of strike his fancy; I guess he 
wanted to find out if there was any money in it. 
He was making money, hand over hand, then; and 
he never stopped speculating and improving till he’d 
scraped together three or four hundred thousand 
dollars: they said a million, but they like round num- 
bers at Moffitt, and I guess half a million would 
lay over it comfortably and leave a few thousands 
to spare, probably. Then he came on to New York.” 

Fulkerson struck a match against the ribbed side 
of the porcelain cup that held the matches in the 
centre of the table, and lit a cigarette, which he 
began to smoke, throwing his head back with a lei- 
surely effect, as if he had got to the end of at least 
as much of his story as he meant to tell without 
prompting. 

March asked him the desired question—“ What in 
the world for ?” 

Fulkerson took out his cigarette and said, with a 
smile: ‘To spend his money, and get his daughters 
into the old Knickerbocker society. Maybe he 
thought they were all the same kind of Dutch.” 

‘* And has he succeeded ?” 

“Well, they’re not social leaders yet. But it’s 
only a question of time—generation or two—espe- 
cially if time’s money, and if Avery Other Week 
is the success it’s bound to be.” 

“You don’t mean to say, Fulkerson,” said 
March, with a half-doubting, half-daunted laugh, 
“that he’s your Angel ?” 

“ That’s what I mean to say,” returned Fulkerson. 
‘TY ran onto him in Broadway one day last summer. 
If you ever saw anybody in your life, you’re sure 
to meet him in Broadway again, sooner or later. 
That’s the philosophy of the bunco business; coun- 


30 A Hazard of 


try people from the same neighborhood are sure 
to run up against each other the first time they 
come to New York. I put out my hand, and I 
said, ‘Isn’t this Mr. Dryfoos from Moffitt?’ He 
didn’t seem to have any use for my hand; he let 
me keep it; and he squared those old lips of his 
till his imperial stuck straight out. Ever see Bern- 
hardt in L’Htrangére? Well, the American hus- 
band is old Dryfoos all over; no mustache, and 
hay-colored chin-whiskers cut slanting from the cor- 
ners of his mouth. He cocked his little gray eyes 
at me, and says he: ‘Yes, young man. My name is 
Dryfoos, and I’m from Moffitt. But I don’t want 
no present of Longfellow’s Works, illustrated; and 
I don’t want to taste no fine teas; but I know a 
policeman that does; and if you’re the son of my 
old friend Squire Strohfeldt, you’d better get out.’ 
‘Well, then,’ said I, ‘how would you like to go into 
the newspaper syndicate business?’ He gave an- 
other look at me, and then he burst out laughing, 
and he grabbed my hand, and he just froze to it. I 
never saw anybody so glad. 

‘‘ Well, the long and the short of it was that I 
asked him round here to Maroni’s to dinner; and 
before we broke up for the night we had settled 
the financial side of the plan that’s brought you to 
New York. I can see,” said Fulkerson, who had 
kept his eyes fast on March’s face, “that you 
don’t more than half like the idea of Dryfoos. It 
ought to give you more confidence in the thing 


New Fortunes. 


than you ever had. You needn’t be afraid,” he 
added, with some feeling, “that I talked Dryfoos 
into the thing for my own advantage.” 

“Oh, my dear Fulkerson !: March protested, all | 
the more fervently because he was really a little 
guilty. 

“Well, of course not! I didn’t mean you were. 
But I just happened to tell him what I wanted to 
go into when I could see my way to it, and he caught 
on of his own accord. The fact is,” said Fulkerson, 
“I guess I'd better make a clean breast of it, now 
Pm atit. Dryfoos wanted to get something for that 
boy of his to do. He’s in railroads himself, and 
he’s in mines and other things, and he keeps busy, 
and he can’t bear to have his boy hanging round 
the house doing nothing, like as if he wasa girl. I 
told him that the great object of a rich man was to 
get his son into just that fix; but he couldn’t seem 
to see it, and the boy hated it himself. He’s gota 
good head, and he wanted to study for the minis- 
try when they were all living together out on the 
farm; but his father had the old-fashioned ideas 
about that. You know they used to think that any 
sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher 
out of, but they wanted the good timber for busi- 
ness; and so the old man wouldn’t let him. Youll 
see the fellow; you’ll like him; he’s no fool, I can 
tell you; and he’s going to be our publisher, nom- 
inally at first, and actually when I’ve taught him 
the ropes a little.” 


XII, 


FULKERSON stopped and looked at March, whom 
he saw lapsing into a serious silence. Doubtless he 
divined his uneasiness with the facts that had been 
given him to digest. He pulled out his watch and 
glanced at it. ‘‘See here, how would you like to go 
up to Forty-sixth Street with me, and drop in on 
old Dryfoos? Now’s yourchance. He’s going West 
to-morrow, and won’t be back for a month or so. 
They'll all be glad to see you, and you’ll understand 
things better when you’ve seen him and his family. 
I can’t explain.” | 

March reflected a moment. Then he said, with 
a wisdom that surprised him, for he would have liked 
to yield to the impulse of his curiosity: ‘ Perhaps 
we'd better wait till Mrs. March comes down, and 
let things take the usual course. The Dryfoos ladies 
will want to call on her as the last-comer, and if I 
treated myself en gar¢on now, and paid the first visit, 
it might complicate matters.” 

“Well, perhaps you're right,” said Fulkerson. 
“T don’t know much about these things, and I don’t 
believe Ma Dryfoos does either.” He was on his 
legs lighting another cigarette. ‘I suppose the 
girls are getting themselves up in etiquette, though. 


Well, then, let’s have a look at the Every Other Week 
building, and then, if you like your quarters there, 
you can go round and close for Mrs. Green’s flat.” 

March’s dormant allegiance to his wife’s wishes 
had been roused by his decision in favor of good 
social usage. ‘I don’t think I shall take the flat,” 
he said. 

“Well, don’t reject it without giving it another 
look, anyway. Come on!” 

He helped March on with his light overcoat, and 
the little stir they made for their departure caught 
the notice of the old German ; he looked up from his 
beer at them. March was more than ever impressed’ 
with something familiar in his face. In compensa- 
tion for his prudence in regard to the Dryfooses 
he now indulged an impulse. He stepped across to 
where the old man sat, with his bald head shining 
like ivory under the gas jet, and his fine patriarchal 
length of bearded mask taking picturesque lights 
and shadows, and put out his hand to him. 

“Lindau! Isn’t this Mr. Lindau ?” 

The old man lifted himself slowly to his feet with 
mechanical politeness, and cautiously took March’s 
hand. “Yes, my name is Lindau,” he said, slowl y; 


2; 4. 
CAE: 4. 


AN 


Bo OO 
<—S 


‘“‘T PUT OUT MY HAND, AND I SAID, ‘ISN’T THIS MR. DRYFOOS FROM MOFFITT? ” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes.’ 


while he scanned March’s face. Then he broke into 
a long cry. ‘‘ Ah-h-h-h-h, my dear poy! my yong 
friendt! my—my— Idt is Passil Marge—not zo? 
Ah, ha, ha,ha! How gladt Iam to zee you! Why, 
Tam gladt! And you rememberdt me? You re- 
member Schiller, and Goethe, and Uhland? And 
Indianapolis? You still life in Indianapolis? It 
sheers my hardt to zee you. But you are lidtle oldt 
too? ‘Tventy-five years makes a difference. Ah, 
I am gladt! Dell me, idt is Passil Marge—not 
zo?” 

He looked anxiously into March’s face, with a 
gentle smile of mixed hope and doubt, and March 
said: “ As sure as it’s Berthold Lindau, and I guess 
it’s you. And you remember the old times? You 
were as much of a boy as I was, Lindau. Are you 
living in New York? Do you recollect how you 
tried to teach me to fence? I don’t know how to 
this day, Lindau. How good you were, and how 
patient! Do you remember how we used to sit up 
in the little parlor back of your printing-office, and 
read Die Riduber, and Die Theilung der Erde, and 
Die Glocke? And Mrs. Lindau? Is she with—” 

“Deadt—deadt long ago. Right after I got home 
from the war—tventy years ago. But tell me, you 
are married ? Children? Yes! Goodt! And how 
oldt are you now ?” 

“It makes me seventeen to see you, Lindau, but 
Pve got a son nearly as old.” 

“Ah, ha,ha! Goodt! And where do you life?” 

“Well, ’m just coming to live in New York,” 
March said, looking over at Fulkerson, who had been 
watching his interview with the perfunctory smile 
of sympathy that people put on at the meeting of old 
friends. “I want to introduce you to my friend 
Mr. Fulkerson. He and I are going into a literary 
enterprise here.” 

“Ah! zo?” said the old man, with polite inter- 
est. He took Fulkerson’s proffered hand, and they 
all stood talking a few moments together. 

Then Fulkerson said, with another look at his 
watch, “Well, March, we’re keeping Mr. Lindau 
from his dinner.” 

“Dinner!” cried the old man. ‘“‘Idt’s better 
than breadt and meadt to see Mr. Marge!” 

“TI must be going, anyway,” said March. “But I 
must see you again soon, Lindau. Where do you 
live? I want a long talk.” 

“And I. You will find me here at dinner-time,” 
said theoldman. “It is the best place ;” and March 
fancied him reluctant to give another address. 

To cover his consciousness he answered, gayly, 
“Then, it’s auf wiedersehen with us. Well!” 

“ Also!” The old man took his hand, and made 
a mechanical movement with his mutilated arm, as 
if he would have taken it in a double clasp. He 
laughed at himself. “I wanted to gife you the 
other handt too, but I gafe it to your gountry a goodt 
while ago.” 


ol 


“To my country ?” asked March, with a sense of 
pain, and yet lightly, as if it were a joke of the old 
man’s. ‘‘ Your country too, Lindau ?” 

The old man turned very grave, and said, almost. 
coldly, ‘What gountry hass a poor man got, Mr. 
Marge ?” 

“Well, you ought to have a share in the one you 
helped to save for us rich men, Lindau,” March re- 
turned, still humoring the joke. 

The old man smiled sadly, but made no answer as. 
he sat down again. 

“Seems to be a little soured,” said Fulkerson, as 
they went down the steps. He was one of those 
Americans whose habitual conception of life is un- 
alloyed prosperity. When any experience or obser- 
vation of his went counter to it he suffered some- 
thing like physical pain. He eagerly shrugged away 
the impression left upon his buoyancy by Lindau, and 
added to March’s continued silence, “‘ What did I 
tell you about meeting every man in New York that 
you ever knew before ?” 

“T never expected to meet Lindau in the world 
again,” said March, more to himself than to Fulker- 
son. “Thad an impression that he had been killed 
in the war. I almost wish he had been.” 

“Oh, hello, now!” cried Fulkerson. 

March laughed, but went on soberly. ‘He was 
aman predestined to adversity, though. When I 
first knew him out in Indianapolis he was starving 
along with a sick wife and a sick newspaper. It 
was before the Germans had come over to the Re- 
publicans generally, but Lindau was fighting the 
antislavery battle just as naturally at Indianapolis 
in 1858 as he fought behind the barricades at Ber- 
lin in 1848. And yet he was always such a gentle 
soul! And so generous! He taught me German 
for the love of it; he wouldn’t spoil his pleasure by 
taking a cent from me; he seemed to get enough 
out of my being young and enthusiastic, and out of 
prophesying great things for me. I wonder what 
the poor old fellow is doing here, with that one hand 
of his ?” 

“‘ Not amassing a very handsome pittance, I should 
say,” said Fulkerson, getting back some of his light- 
ness. ‘There are lots of two-handed fellows in New 
York that are not doing much better, I guess. 
Maybe he gets some writing on the German papers.” 

“‘T hope so. He’s one of the most accomplished 
men! He used to be a splendid musician—pianist 
—and knows eight or ten languages.” 

“Well, it’s astonishing,” said Fulkerson, ‘ how 
much lumber those Germans can carry around in 
their heads all their lives, and never work it up into 
anything. It’s a pity they couldn’t do the acquiring, 
and let out the use of their learning to a few bright 
Americans. Wecould make things hum, if we could 
arrange ’em that way.” 

He talked on, unheeded by March, who went along 
half-consciously tormented by his lightness in the 


32 


pensive memories the meeting with Lindau had 
called up. Was this all that sweet, unselfish nature 
could come to? What a homeless old age at that 
meagre Italian table d’/dte, with that tall glass of 
beer for a half-hour’s oblivion! That shabby dress, 
that pathetic mutilation! He must have a pension, 
twelve dollars a mouth, or eighteen, from a grateful 
country. But what else did he eke out with ? 

“Well, here we are,” said Fulkerson, cheerily. 
He ran up the steps before March, and opened the 
carpenter’s temporary valve in the door frame, and 
led the way into a darkness smelling sweetly ‘of 
unpainted wood-work and newly dried plaster; their 
feet slipped on shavings and grated on sand. He 
scratched a match, and found a candle, and then 
walked about up and down stairs, and lectured on 
the advantages of the place. He had fitted up 
bachelor apartments for himself in the house, and 
said that he was going to have a flat to let on the 
top floor. “I didn’t offer it to you because I sup- 
posed you’d be too proud to live over your shop; 
and it’s too small, anyway; only five rooms.” 

“Yes, that’s too small,” said March, shirking the 
other point. 

‘Well, then, here’s the room I intend for your 
office,” said Fulkerson, showing him into a large 
back parlor one flight up. ‘You'll have it quiet 
from the street noises here, and you can be at home 
or not as you please. There’ll be a boy on the stairs 
to find out. Now, you see, this makes the Grosvenor 
Green flat practicable, if you want it.” 

March felt the forces of fate closing about him 
and pushing him to a decision. He feebly fought 
them off till he could have another look at the flat. 
Then, baffled and subdued still more by the unex- 
pected presence of Mrs, Grosvenor Green herself, 
who was occupying it so as to be able to show it 
effectively, he took it. He was aware more than ever 
of its absurdities; he knew that his wife would 
never cease to hate it; but he had suffered one of 
those eclipses of the imagination to which men of 
his temperament are subject, and in which he could 
see no future for his desires. He felt a comfort in 
committing himself, and exchanging the burden of 
indecision for the burden of responsibility. 

“T didn’t know,” said Fulkerson, as they walked 
pack to his hotel together, “ but you might fix it up 
with that lone widow and her pretty daughter to 
take part of thety house here.” He seemed to be re- 
minded of it by the fact of passing the house, and 
March looked up at its dark front. He could not 
have told exactly why he felt a pang of remorse at 
the sight, and doubtless it was more regret for hav- 
ing taken the Grosvenor Green flat than for not 
having taken the widow’s rooms. Still he could 
not forget her wistfulness when his wife and he 
were looking at them, and her disappointment 
when they decided against them. He had toyed, in 
his after-talk to Mrs. March, with a sort of hypo- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


thetical obligation they had to modify their plans so 
as to meet the widow’s want of just such a family as 
theirs; they had both said what a blessing it would 
be to her, and what a pity they could not do it; but 
they had decided very distinctly that they could 
not. Now it seemed to him that they might; and 
he asked himself whether he had not actually de- 
parted as much from their ideal as if he had taken 
board with the widow. Suddenly it seemed to him 
that his wife asked him this too. 

‘“‘T reckon,” said Fulkerson, ‘“ that she could have © 
arranged to give you your meals in your rooms, 
and it would have come to about the same thing as 
house-keeping.”’ 

‘No sort of boarding can be the same as house- 
keeping,” said March. “I want my little girl to 
have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole | 
family to have the moral effect of house-keeping. 
It’s demoralizing to board, in every way; it isn’t a 
home, if anybody else takes the care of it off your 
hands.” 

“Well, I suppose so,” Fulkerson assented; but 
March’s words had a hollow ring to himself, and 
in his own mind he began to retaliate his dissatis- 
faction upon Fulkerson. 

He parted from him on the usual terms outward. 
ly, but he felt obscurely abused by Fulkerson in 
regard to the Dryfooses, father and son. He did 
not know but Fulkerson had taken an advantage 
of him in allowing him to commit himself to their 
enterprise without fully and frankly telling him 
who and what his backer was; he perceived that 
with young Dryfoos as the publisher and Fulkerson 
as the general director of the paper there might be 
very little play for his own ideas of its conduct. Per- 
haps it was the hurt to his vanity involved by the 
recognition of this fact that made him forget how 
little choice he really had in the matter, and how, 
since he had not accepted the offer to edit the insur- 
ance paper, nothing remained for him but to close 
with Fulkerson. In this moment of suspicion and 
resentment he accused Fulkerson of hastening his 
decision in regard to the Grosvenor Green apart- 
ment; he now refused to consider it a decision, and 
said to himself that if he felt disposed to do so he 
would send Mrs. Green a note reversing it in the 
morning. But he put it all off till morning with his 
clothes, when he went to bed; he put off even think- 
ing what his wife would say; he cast Fulkerson and 
his constructive treachery out of his mind too, and 
invited into it some pensive reveries of the past, 
when he still stood at the parting of the ways, and 
could take this path or that. In his middle life 
this was not possible; he must follow the path 
chosen long ago, wherever it led. He was not mas- 
ter of himself, as he once seemed, but the servant 
of those he loved; if he could do what he liked, 
perhaps he might renounce this whole New York 
enterprise, and go off somewhere out of the reach 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


of care; but he could not do what he liked, that was 
very clear. In the pathos of this conviction he 
‘dwelt compassionately upon the thought of poor old 
Lindau; he resolved to make him accept a hand- 
some sum of money—more than he could spare, 
something that he would feel the loss of—in pay- 
ment of the lessons in German and fencing given 
so long ago. At the usual rate for such lessons, his 
debt, with interest for twenty odd years, would run 
very far into the hundreds. Too-far, he perceived, 
for his wife’s joyous approval; he determined not 
to add the interest; or he believed that Lindau 
would refuse the interest; he put a fine speech in 
his mouth, making him do so; and after that he 
got Lindau employment on Avery Other Week, and 
took care of him till he died. 

Through all his melancholy and munificence he 
was aware of sordid anxieties for having taken the 
Grosvenor Green apartment. These began to as- 
sume visible, tangible shapes as he drowsed, and to 
become personal entities, from which he woke, with 
little starts, to a realization of their true nature, and 
then suddenly fell fast asleep. 

In the accomplishment of the events which his 
reverie played with, there was much that retroac- 
tively stamped it with prophecy, but much also that 
‘was better than he foreboded. He found that with 
regard to the Grosvenor Green apartment he had 
not allowed for his wife’s willingness to get any 
‘sort of roof over her head again after the removal 
from their old home, or for the alleviations that grow 
up through mere custom. The practical workings 
of the apartment were not so bad; it had its good 
points, and after the first sensation of oppression in 
it they began to feel the convenience of its arrange- 
ment. They were at that time of life when people 
first turn to their children’s opinion with deference, 
and in the loss of keenness in their own likes and 
dislikes, consult the young preferences which are 
still so sensitive. It went far to reconcile Mrs. 
March to the apartment that her children were 
pleased with its novelty; when this wore off for 
them, she had herself begun to find it much more 
easily manageable than a house. After she had 
put away several barrels of gimcracks, and folded up 
‘screens and rugs and skins, and carried them all off 
to the little dark store-room which the flat develop- 
ed, she perceived at once a roominess and coziness 
in it unsuspected before. Then, when people began 
to call, she had a pleasure, a superiority, in saying 
that it was a furnished apartment, and in disclaim- 
ing all responsibility for the upholstery and decora- 
tion. If March was by, she always explained that 
it was Mr. March’s fancy, and amiably laughed it 
-off with her callers as a mannish eccentricity. No- 
body really seemed to think it otherwise than 
pretty; and this again was a triumph for Mrs. 
March, because it showed how inferior the New York 
wtaste was to the Boston taste in such matters, 


3 


oo 


March submitted silently to his punishment, and 
laughed with her before company at his own eccen- 
tricity. She had been so preoccupied with the ad- 
justment of the family to its new quarters and cir- 
cumstances that the time passed for laying his mis- 
givings, if they were misgivings, about Fulkerson 
before her, and when an occasion came for express- 
ing them they had themselves passed in the anxieties 
of getting forward the first number of Avery Other 
Week. He kept these from her too, and the busi- 
ness that brought them to New York had apparently 
dropped into abeyance before the questions of domes- 
tic economy that presented and absented them- 
selves. March knew his wife to be a woman of 
good mind and in perfect sympathy with him, but 
he understood the limitations of her perspective ; 
and if he was not too wise, he was too expe- 
rienced to intrude upon it any affairs of his till her 
own were reduced to the right order and propor- 
tion. It would have been folly to talk to her of 
Fulkerson’s conjecturable uncandor while she was 
in doubt whether her cook would like the kitchen, 
or her two servants would consent to room together ; 
and till it was decided what school Tom should 
go to, and whether Bella should have lessons at 
home or not, the relation which March was to bear 
to the Dryfooses, as owner and publisher, was not 
to be discussed with his wife. He might drag it 
in, but he was aware that with her mind distracted 
by more immediate interests he could not get from 
her that judgment, that reasoned divination, which 
he relied upon so much. She would try, she would 
do her best, but the result would be a view clouded 
and discolored by the effort she must make. 

He put the whole matter by, and gave himself to 
the details of the work before him. In this he 
found not only escape, but reassurance, for it became 
more and more apparent that whatever was nom- 
inally the structure of the business, a man of his 
qualifications and his instincts could not have an 
insignificant place in it. He had also the consola- 
tion of liking his work, and of getting an instant 
grasp of it that grew constantly firmer and closer. 
The joy of knowing that he had not made a mis- 
take was great. In giving rein to ambitions long 
forborne he seemed to get back to the youth when 
he had indulged them first; and after half a life- 
time passed in pursuits alien to his nature, he was 
feeling the serene happiness of being mated through 
his work to his early love. From the outside the 
spectacle might have had its pathos, and it is not 
easy to justify such an experiment as he had made 
at his time of life, except upon the ground where he 
rested from its consideration—the ground of neces- 
sity. 

His work was more in his thoughts than himself, 
however, and as the time for the publication of the 
first number of his periodical came nearer, his cares 
all centred upon it. Without fixing any date, Ful- 


34 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


kerson had announced it, and pushed his announce- 
ments with the shameless vigor of a born advertiser. 
He worked his interest with the press to the utmost, 
and paragraphs of a variety that did credit to his 
ingenuity were afloat everywhere. Some of them 
were speciously unfavorable in tone; they criticised 
and even ridiculed the principles on which the new 
’ departure in literary journalism was based. Others 
defended it; others yet denied that this rumored 
principle was really the principle. All contributéd 
to make talk. All proceeded from the same fertile 
invention. a 

March observed with a degree of mortification that 
the talk was very little of it in the New York press; 
there the references to the novel enterprise were 
slight and cold. But Fulkerson said: ‘‘ Don’t mind 
that, old man. It’s the whole country that makes 
or breaks a thing like this; New York has very 
little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would 
be different. New York does make or break a play; 
but it doesn’t make or break a book; it doesn’t 
make or break a magazine. The great mass of the 
readers are outside of New York, and the rural dis- 
tricts are what we have got to go for. They don’t 
read much in New York; they write, and talk about 
what they’ve written. Don’t you worry.”’ 

The rumor of Fulkerson’s connection with the en- 
terprise accompanied many of the paragraphs, and 
he was able to stay March’s thirst for employment 
by turning over to him from day to day heaps of 
the manuscripts which began to pour in from his old 
syndicate writers, as well as from adventurous vol- 
unteers all over the country. With these in hand 


March began practically to plan the first number, 
and to concrete a general scheme from the material, 
and the experience they furnished. They had in- 
tended to issue the first number with the new year, 
and if it had been an affair of literature alone, it. 


would have been very easy; but it was the art leg: 


they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it. They had 
not merely to deal with the question of specific il- 
lustrations for this article or that, but to decide 
the whole character of their illustrations, and first. 
of all to get a design for a cover which should 


both ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastid- 


ious. These things did not come properly within 


March’s province — that had been clearly under-- 


stood —and for a while Fulkerson tried to run the 
art leg himself. 
was simpler to make the phrase than to run the 
leg. The difficult generation, at once stiff-backed, 
and slippery, with which he had to do in this en-. 


deavor, reduced even so buoyant an optimist to. 


despair, and after wasting some valuable weeks in, 
trying to work the artists himself, he determined, 
to get an artist to work them. But what artist ? 
It could not be a man with fixed reputation and a 


following; he would be too costly, and would have: 
too many enemies among his brethren, even if he- 


would consent to undertake the job. Fulkerson 
had a man in mind, an artist too, who would have 
been the very thing if he had been the thing at all. 
He had talent enough, and his sort of talent would 
reach round the whole situation, but, as Fulkerson 


said, he was as many kinds of an ass as he was. 


kinds of an artist. 


Part Second. 


THe evening when March closed with Mrs. 
Green’s reduced offer, and decided to take her apart- 
ment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejected sat 
with her daughter in an upper room at the back of 
her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light 
she was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the 
same table. From time to time, as they talked, the 
girl lifted her head and tilted it a little on one side 
so as to get some desired effect of her work. 

“Tt’s a mercy the cold weather holds off,” said 
the mother. ‘We should have to light the fur- 
nace, unless we wanted to scare everybody away 
with a cold house; and I don’t. know who would 
take care of it, or what would become of us, every 
way.” 

“They seem to have been scared away from a 
house that wasn’t cold,” said the girl. ‘“ Perhaps 
they might like a cold one. But it’s too early for 


cold yet. 
vember.” 


“The Messenger says they’ve had a sprinkling of’ 


snow.” 
“Oh yes, at St. Barnaby’s! I don’t know when. 
they don’t have sprinklings of snow there. Tm. 


awfully glad we haven’t got that winter before us.’”” 


The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the: 
contrast their experience opposes to the hopeful, 
recklessness of such talk as this. ‘ We may have. 
a worse winter here,”’ she said, darkly. 


“Then I couldn’t stand it,” said the girl, “and I. 


should go in for lighting out to Florida double-. 
quick.” 

“ And how would you get to Florida ?”’ demanded, 
her mother, severely. 

“Oh, by the usual conveyance—Pullman vesti- 
buled train, I suppose. 


The phrase was again his, but it. 


It’s only just in the beginning of No-. 


What makes you so blue,, 


-{ 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 35 


mamma?” The girl was all the time sketching 
away, rubbing out, lifting her head for the effect, 
and then bending it over her work again without 
looking at her mother. 

“Tam not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this 
—this hopefulness of yours.” 

“Why? What harm does it do?” 

“‘ Harm ?” echoed the mother. 

Pending the effort she must make in saying, the 
girlcut in: “Yes,harm. You’vé kept your despair 
dusted off and ready for use at an instant’s notice 
ever since we came, and what good has it done? 
Pm going to keep on hoping to the bitter end. 
That’s what papa did.” 

It was what the Rev. Archibald Leighton had 
done with all the consumptive’s buoyancy. The 
morning he died he told them that now he had 
turned the point, and was really going to get well. 
The cheerfulness was not only in his disease, but 
in his temperament. Its excess was always a little 
against him in his church work, and Mrs. Leighton 
was right enough in feeling that if it had not been 
for the ballast of her instinctive despondency he 
would have made shipwreck of such small chances 
of prosperity as befell him in life. It was not from 
him that his daughter got her talent, though he 
had left her his temperament intact of his widow’s 
legal thirds. He was one of those men of whom 
the country people say when he is gone that the 
woman gets along better without him. Mrs. Leigh- 
ton had long eked out their income by taking a 
summer boarder or two, as a great favor, into her 
family ; and when the greater need came, she frank- 
ly gave up her house to the summer-folks (as they 
call them in the country), and managed it for their 
comfort from the snrall quarter of it in which she 
shut herself up with her daughter. 

The notion of shutting up is an exigency of the 
rounded period. The fact is, of course, that Alma 
Leighton was not shut up in any sense whatever. 
She was the pervading light, if not force, of the 
house. She was a good cook, and she managed the 
kitchen with the help of an Irish girl, while her 
mother looked after the rest of the house-keeping. 
But she was not systematic; she had inspiration 
but not discipline; and her mother mourned more 
over the days when Alma left the whole dinner to 
the Irish girl than she rejoiced in those when one 
of Alma’s great thoughts took form in a chicken 
pie of incomparable savor or in a matchless pud- 
ding. The off days came when her artistic nature 
was expressing itself in charcoal, for she drew to 
the admiration of all among the lady boarders who 
could not draw. The others had their reserves; 
they readily conceded that Alma had genius, but 
they were sure she needed instruction. On the 
other hand, they were not so radical as to agree 
with the old painter who came every summer to 
paint the elms of the St. Barnaby meadows. He 


contended that she needed to be a man in order 
to amount to anything; but in this theory he was 
opposed by an authority of his own sex, whom the 
lady sketchers believed to speak with more impar- 
tiality in a matter concerning them as much as Alma 
Leighton. He said that instruction would do, and 
he was not only younger and handsomer, but he 
was fresher from the schools than old Harrington, 
who, even the lady sketchers could see, painted in 
an obsolescent manner. His name was Beaton— 
Angus Beaton; but he was not Scotch, or not more 
Scotch than Mary Queen of Scots was. His father 
was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born in Syracuse, 
New York, and it had taken only three years in Paris 
to obliterate many traces of native and ancestral 
manner in him. He wore his black beard cut short- 
er than his mustache, and a little pointed; he stood 
with his shoulders well thrown back, and with a 
lateral curve of his person when he talked about 
art, which would alone have carried conviction even 
if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming al- 
most to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and 
had not spoken English with quick, staccato im- 
pulses, so as to give it the effect of epigrammatic 
and sententious French. One of the ladies said 
that you always thought of him as having spoken 
French after it was over, and-accused herself of 
wrong in not being able to feel afraid of him. 
None of the ladies were afraid of him, though they 
could not believe that he was really so deferential to 
their work as he seemed; and they knew, when he 
would not criticise Mr. Harrington’s work, that he 
was just acting from principle. 

They may or may not have known the difference 
with which he treated Alma’s work; but the girl 
herself felt that his abrupt, impersonal comment re- 
cognized her as a real sister in art. He told her 
she ought to come to New York, and draw in the 
League, or get into some painter’s private class; 
and it was the sense of duty thus appealed to which 
finally resulted in the hazardous experiment she and 
her mother were now making. There were no logi- 
cal breaks in the chain of their reasoning from past 
success with boarders in St. Barnaby to future suc- 
cess with boarders in New York. Of course the 
outlay was much greater. The rent of the furnish- 
ed house they had taken was such that if they failed 
their experiment would be little less than ruinous. 

But they were not going to fail; that was what 
Alma contended, with a hardy courage that her mo- 
ther sometimes felt almost invited failure, if it did 
not deserve it, She was one of those people who 
believe that if you dread harm enough it is less 
likely to happen. She acted on this superstition as ~ 
if it were a religion. 

“Tf it had not been for my despair, as you call 
it, Alma,” she answered, “I don’t know where we 
should have been now.” 

‘‘T suppose we should have been in St. Barnaby,” 


36 


said the girl. ‘ And if it’s worse to be in New York, 
you see what your despair’s done, mamma. But 
what’s the use? You meant well, and I don’t blame 
you. You can’t expect even despair to come out 
always just the way you want it. Perhaps you’ve 
used too much of it.” The girl laughed, and Mrs. 
Leighton laughed too. Like every one else, she was 
not merely a prevailing mood, as people are apt to 
be in books, but was an irregularly spheroidal 
character, with surfaces that caught the different 
lights of circumstance and reflected them. Alma 
got up and took a pose before the mirror, which 
she then transferred to her sketch. The room was 
pinned about with other sketches, which showed 
with fantastic indistinctness in the shaded gas-light. 
Alma held up the drawing. ‘‘ How do you like it ?” 

Mrs. Leighton bent forward over her sewing 
to look at it. ‘“You’ve got the man’s face rather 
weak.” 

“Yes, that’s so. Hither I see all the hidden 
weakness that’s in men’s natures, and bring it to 
the surface in their figures, or else I put my own 
weakness into them. And, anyway, it’s a drawback 
to their presenting a truly manly appearance. As 
long as I have one of the miserable objects before 
me, I can draw him; but as soon as his back’s turned 
I get to putting ladies into men’s clothes. I should 
think you’d be scandalized, mamma, if you were a 
really feminine person. It must be your despair 
that helps you to bear up. But what’s the matter 
with the young lady in young lady’s clothes? Any 
dust on her ?” 

“What expressions!” said Mrs. Leighton. ‘Real- 
ly, for a refined girl you are the most unrefined !” 

“Go on—about the girl in the picture!” said 
Alma, slightly knocking her mother on the shoulder 
as she stood over her. 

“T don’t see anything ¢o her. 

“Oh, just being made love to, I suppose.” 

“‘She’s perfectly insipid !”” 

“You're awfully articulate, mamma! Now if 
Mr. Wetmore was to criticise that picture he’d 
draw a circle round it in the air, and look at it 
through that, and tilt his head first on one side 
and then on the other, and then look at you, as if you 
were a figure in it, and then collapse awhile, and 
moan a little, and gasp, ‘Isn’t your young lady a 
little too—too—’ and then he’d try to get the word 
out of you, and groan and suffer some more; and 
you’d say, ‘She ¢s, rather,’ and that would give him 
courage, and he’d say, ‘I don’t mean that she’s so 
very— ‘OF course not.’ ‘You understand ? 
‘Perfectly. I see it myself, now.’ ‘Well, then’-— 
and he’d take your pencil and begin to draw—‘I 
should give her a little more— Ah?’ ‘Yes; Isee 
the difference.’ ‘ You see the difference?’ And he’d 
go off to some one else, and you’d know that you'd 
been doing the wishy-washiest thing in the world, 
though he hadn’t spoken a word of criticism, and 


What’s she doing ?” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


couldn’t. But he wouldn’t have noticed the ex- 
pression at all; he’d have shown you where your 
drawing was bad. He doesn’t care for what he calls 
the literature of a thing; he says that will take care 
of itself if the drawing’s good. He doesn’t like my 
doing these chic things ; but I’m going to keep it up, 
for J think it’s the nedrest way to illustrating.” 

She took her sketch and pinned it up on the door. 

“And has Mr. Beaton been about, yet?” asked 
her mother. 

“No,” said the girl, with her back still turned; 
and she added, “I believe he’s in New York; Mr. 
Wetmore’s seen him.” 

“It’s a little strange he doesn’t call.” 

“Tt would be if he were not an artist. But 
artists never do anything like other people. He 
was on his good behavior while he was with us, and 
he’s a great deal more conventional than most of 
them; but even he can’t keep it up. That’s what 
makes me really think that women can never amount 
to anything in art. They keep all their appoint- 
ments and fulfil all their duties just as if they didn’t 
know anything about art. Well, most of them 
don’t. We’ve got that new model to-day.” 

“What new model ?” 

“The one Mr. Wetmore was telling us about— 
the old German. He’s splendid. He’s got the most 
beautiful head; just like the old masters’ things. 
He used to be Humphrey Williams’s model for his 
biblical pieces; but since he’s dead, the old man 
hardly gets anything to do. Mr. Wetmore says 
there isn’t anybody in the Bible that Williams didn’t 
paint him as. He’s the Law and the Prophets in 
all his Old Testament pictures, and he’s Joseph, 
Peter, Judas Iscariot, and the Scribes and Pharisees 
in the New.” 

“It’s a good thing people don’t know how artists 
work, or some of the most sacred pictures would 
have no influence,” said Mrs. Leighton. 

“Why, of course not!” cried the girl. “And the 
influence is the last thing a painter thinks of—or 
supposes he thinks of. What he knows he’s anx- 
ious about is the drawing and the color. But peo- 
ple will never understand how simple artists are. 
When I reflect what a complex and _ sophistica- 
ted being J am, I’m afraid I can never come to any- 
thing in art. Or I should be if Ihadn’t genius.” ~ 

“Do you think Mr. Beaton is very see tt Y? asked ah ae 
Mrs. Leighton. 2 

“Mr. Wetmore doesn’t think he’s very Coafigh 
of an artist. He thinks he talks too well. They 
believe that if a man can express himself clearly h 
can’t paint.” ~ SA 

“‘ And what do you believe ?” Bei 

“Oh, J can express myself, foo.” + 

The mother seemed to be satisfied art this 
evasion. After a while she said, “I presume he | 
will call when he gets settled.” | 

The girl made no answer to this. ‘One of the ; 


tose 2 


+ ty y here.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 37 


girls says that old model is an educated man. He 


was in the war, and lost a hand. Doesn’t it seem 
a pity for such a man to have to sit to a class of 
affected geese like us as a model? I declare it 
makes me sick. And we shall keep him a week, 
and pay him six or seven dollars for the use of his 
grand old head, and then what will he do? The last 
time he was regularly employed was when Mr. Mace 
was working at his.Damascus Massacre. Then he 
wanted so many Arab sheiks arid Christian elders 
that he kept old Mr. Lindau steadily employed for 
six months. Now he has to pick up odd jobs where 
he can.” 

““T suppose he has his pension,” said Mrs. Leigh- 
ton. 

“No; one of the girls” —that was the way Alma 
always described her fellow-students—“ says he 
has no pension. He didn’t apply for it for a long 
time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it was 
somethinged—vetoed, I believe she said.” 

“Who vetoed it?” asked Mrs. Leighton, with 
some curiosity about the process, which she held in 
reserve. 

“T don’t know—whoever vetoes things. I wonder 
what Mr. Wetmore does think of us—his class. We 
must seem perfectly crazy. There isn’t one of us 
really knows what she’s doing it for, or what she ex- 
pects to happen when she’s done it. I suppose every 
one thinks she has genius. I know the Nebraska 
widow does, for she says that unless you have 
genius it isn’t the least use. Everybody’s puzzled 
to know what she does with her baby when she’s 
at work—whether she gives it soothing syrup. I 


_wonder how Mr. Wetmore can keep from laughing 


in our faces. I know he does behind our backs.” 

Mrs. Leighton’s mind wandered back to another 
point. “Then if he says Mr. Beaton can’t paint, I 
presume he doesn’t respect him very much.’” 

“Oh, he never sazd he couldn’t paint. But I know 
he thinks so. He says he’s an excellent critic.” 

‘“‘ Alma,” her mother said, with the effect of 
breaking off, ‘‘ what do you suppose is the reason 
he hasn’t been near us ?” 

“Why, I don’t know, mamma, except that it 
would have been natural for another person to 
come, and he’s an artist—at least, artist enough for 
that.” 

“That doesn’t account for it altogether. He 


_ was very nice at St. Barnaby, and seemed so inter- 


ested in you—your work.” 

re . Plenty of people were nice at St. Barnaby. 
ut rich Mrs. Horn couldn’t contain her joy when 
heard we were coming to New York, but she 
n’t poured in upon us a great deal since we got 


“But that’s different. She’s very fashionable, 
and she’s taken up with her own set. But Mr. 
Beaton’s one of our kind.” 

“Thank you. Papa wasn’t quite a tombstone- 
cutter, mamma.” 

“That makes it all the harder to bear. He 
cavt be ashamed of us. Perhaps he doesn’t know 
where we are.” 

“Do you wish to send him your card, mamma 2?” 
The girl flushed and towered in scorn of the 
idea. 

“Why, no, Alma,” returned her mother. 

“ Well, then,” said Alma. 

But Mrs. Leighton was not so easily quelled. 
She had got her mind on Mr. Beaton, and she could 
not detach it at once. Besides, she was one of 
those women (they are commoner than the same 
sort of men) whom it does not pain to take out their 
most. intimate thoughts and examine them in the 
light of other people’s opinions. ‘‘ But I don’t see 
how he can behave so. He must know that—” 

“That what, mamma ?” demanded the girl. 

‘That he influenced us a great deal in coming—” 

“He didwt. If he dared to presume to think 
such a thing—” | 

‘Now, Alma,” said her mother, with the clinging 
persistence of such natures, ‘you know he did. 
And it’s no use for you to pretend that we didn’t 
count upon him in—in every way. You may not 
have noticed his attentions, and I don’t say you did, 
but others certainly did; and I must say that I didn’t 
expect he would drop us so.” 

“ Drop us!” cried Alma, ina fury. ‘Oh!” 

“Yes, drop us, Alma. He must know where we 
are. Of course Mr. Wetmore’s spoken to him about 
you, and it’s a shame that he hasn’t been near us. 
I should have thought common gratitude, common 
decency, would have brought him, after—after all we 
did for him.” 

“We did nothing for him—nothing/ He paid 
his board, and that ended it.” 

“No, it didn’t, Alma. You know what he used to 
say—about its being like home, and all that; and - 
I must say that after his attentions to you, and all 
the things you told me he said, I expected something 
very dif—” 

A sharp peal of the door-bell thrilled through the 
house, and as if the pull of the bell wire had twitch- 
ed her to her feet, Mrs. Leighton sprang up and 
srappled with her daughter in their common 
terror. 

They both glared at the clock, and made sure that; 
it was five minutes after nine. Then they abandon. 
ed themselves some moments to the unrestricted 
play of their apprehensions. 


38 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


II. 


“Way, Alma,” whispered the mother, ‘“‘ who in the 
world can it be at this time of night? You don’t 
suppose he—”’ 

“Well, ’m not going to the door anyhow, mo- 
ther, I don’t care who it is; and of course he 
wouldn’t be such a goose as to come at this hour.” 
She put on a look of miserable trepidation, and 
shrank back from the door, while the hum of the 
bell died away in the hall. 

‘What shall we do?” asked Mrs. Leighton, help- 
lessly. 

‘Let him go away—whoever they are,” said Alma. 

Another and more peremptory ring forbade them 
refuge in this simple expedient. 

“Oh dear! what shall we do? 
despatch.” 

The conjecture moved Alma to no more than a 
rigid stare. “I shall not go,” she said. A third 
ring more insistent than the others followed, and she 
said: ““You go ahead, mamma, and I’ll come be- 
hind to scream if it’s anybody. We can look 
through the side lights at the door first.” 

Mrs. Leighton fearfully led the way from the 
back chamber where they had been sitting, and 
slowly descended the stairs. Alma came behind 
and turned up the hall gas jet with a sudden flash 
that made them both jump alittle. The gas inside 
rendered it more difficult to tell who was on the 
threshold, but Mrs. Leighton decided from a timor- 
ous peep through the scrims that it was a lady and 
gentleman. Something in this distribution of sex 
emboldened her; she took her life in her hand and 
opened the door. 

The lady spoke. “ Does Mrs. Leighton live heah ?” 
she said, in a rich, throaty voice; and she feigned 
a reference to the agent’s permit she held in her 
hand. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Leighton: she mechanically oc- 
cupied the doorway, while Alma already quivered be- 
hind her with impatience of her impoliteness. 

‘“‘Qh,” said the lady, who began to appear more 
and more a young lady, “ Ah didn’t know but Ah 
had mistaken the ho’se. Ah suppose it’s rather 
late to see the apawtments, and Ah most ask you 
to pawdon us.” She put this tentatively, with a del- 
icately growing recognition of Mrs. Leighton as the 
lady of the house, and a humorous intelligence of 
the situation in the glance she threw Alma over 
her mother’s shoulder. “ Ah’m afraid we most 
have frightened you ?” 

“Oh, not at all,” said Alma; and at the same 
time her mother said, “ Will you walk in, please ?” 

The gentleman promptly removed his hat and 
made the Leightons an inclusive bow. ‘You awe 
very kind, madam, and I am sorry for the trouble 


Perhaps it’s a 


we awe giving you.” He was tall and severe-look- 
ing, with a gray, trooperish mustache and iron-gray 
hair, and, as Alma decided, iron-gray eyes. His 
daughter was short, plump, and fresh-colored, with 
an effect of liveliness that did not at all express it- 
self in her broad-vowelled, rather formal speech, 
with its odd valuations of some of the auxiliary 
verbs, and its total elision of the canine letter. 

“We awe from the Soath,” she said, ‘“‘and we ar- 
rived this mawning, but we got this cyahd from the 
brokah just befo’ dinnah, and so we awe rathah 
late.” 

“Not at all; it’s only nine o’clock,” said Mrs. 
Leighton, in condonation. She looked up from the 
card the young lady had given her, and explained, 
“We haven’t got in our servants yet, and we had 
to answer the bell ourselves, and—” 

“You were frightened, of co’se,” said the young 
lady, caressingly. 

The gentleman said they ought not to have come 
so late, and he offered some formal apologies. 

“We should have been just as much scared any 
time after five o’clock,” Alma said to the sympathetic 
intelligence in the girl’s face. 

She laughed out. “Of co’se! Ah would have 
my hawt in my moath all day long too, if Ah was 
living in a big ho’se alone.” 

A moment of stiffness followed; Mrs. Leighton 
would have liked to withdraw from the intimacy of 
the situation, but she did not know how. It was 
very well for these people to assume to be what 
they pretended ; but, she reflected too late, she had 
no proof of it except the agent’s permit. They 
were all standing in the hall together, and she pro- 
longed the awkward pause while she examined the 
permit. ‘You are Mr. Woodburn 2?” she asked, in 
a way that Alma felt implied he might not be. 

“Yes, madam; from Charlottesboag, Virginia,” 
he answered, with the slight umbrage a man shows 
when the strange cashier turns his check over and 
questions him before cashing it. 

Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained 
Subordinate ; she examined the other girl’s dress, 
and decided in a superficial consciousness that she 
had made her own bonnet. 

“T shall be glad to show you my rooms,” said ah 
Mrs. Leighton, with an irrelevant sigh. ‘You must 
excuse their being not just as I should wish them. 
We’re hardly settled yet.” p 

“Don’t speak of it, madam,” said the gentleman, 

“if you can overlook the trouble we awe giving you 
at such an unseasonable houah.” 

““Ah’m a ho’se-keepah mahself,’’? Miss Wood- 
burn joined in, “and Ah know ho’ to accyoant fo’ 
everything.” 


“MR, WOODBURN CONSENTED TO SIT DOWN, AND HE REMAINED LISTENING TO MRS. LEIGHTON WHILE THE DAUGHTER BUSTLED UP TO THE SKETCHES PINNED ROUND 


THE ROOM AND QUESTIONED ALMA ABOUT THEM.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Mrs. Leighton led the way upstairs, and the young 
lady decided upon the large front room and small 
side room on the third story. She said she could 
take the small one, and the other was so large that 
her father could both sleep and work in it. She 
seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. Leighton’s price 
was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her fa- 
ther refused to have any bargaining, with a haughty 
self-respect which he softened to deference for Mrs, 
Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the way for 
some confidences from her, and before the affair was 
arranged she was enjoying in her quality of clerical 
widow the balm of the Virginians’ reverent sympa- 
thy. They said they were Church people them- 
‘selves. 

“ Ah don’t know what yo’ mothah means by yo’ 
tho’se not being in oddah,” the young lady said to 
Alma as they went down-stairs together. ‘ Ah’m 
a great ho’se-keepah mahself, and Ah mean what 
Ah say.” 

They had all turned mechanically into the room 
where the Leightons were sitting when the Wood- 
‘burns rang. Mr. Woodburn consented to sit down, 
-and he remained listening to Mrs. Leighton while 
his daughter bustled up to the sketches pinned 
round the room and questioned Alma about them. 

“ Ah suppose you awe going to bea great awtust ?” 
‘she said, in friendly banter, when Alma owned to 
having done the things. ‘“ Ah’ve a great notion to 
‘take a few lessons mahself. Who's yo’ teachah ?” 

Alma said she was drawing in Mr. Wetmore’s 
‘class; and Miss Woodburn said: “ Well, it’s just 
beautiful, Miss Leighton; it’s grand. Ah suppose 
it’s raght expensive, now? Mah goodness! we have 
‘to cyoant the coast so much nowadays it seems to 
me we do nothing dué cyoant it. Ah’d like to bah 
‘something once without askin’ the price.” 

“ Well, if you didn’t ask it,” said Alma, “I don’t 
believe Mr. Wetmore would ever know what the price 
-of his lessons was. He has to think, when you ask 
him.” 

“Why, he most be chomming,” said Miss Wood- 
Durn. “Perhaps Ah maght get the lessons for 
mothing from him. Well, Ah believe in my soul 
Ah’ll trah. Now ho’ did you begin? and ho’ do you 
expect to get anything oat of it?” She turned on 
Alma’s eyes brimming with a shrewd mixture of 
fun and earnest, and Alma made note of the fact 
that she had an early nineteenth-century face, round, 
arch, a little coquettish, but extremely sensible and 
unspoiled looking, such as used to be painted a 
2 ‘good deal in miniature at that period; a tendency 
of her brown hair to twine and twist at the tem- 
ples helped the effect; a light comb would have 
completed it, Alma felt, if she had her bonnet off. 
It was almost a Yankee country-girl type; but per- 
haps it appeared so to Alma because it was, like 
that, pure Anglo-Saxon. Alma herself, with her 
dull dark skin, slender in figure, slow in speech, 


39 


with aristocratic forms in her long hands, and the 
oval of her fine face pointed to a long chin, felt 
herself much more Southern in style than this bloom- 
ing, bubbling, bustling Virginian. 

“T don’t know,” she answered, slowly. 

“Going to take po’traits,” suggested Miss Wood- 
burn, “or just paint the ahdeal?” A demure bur- 
lesque lurked in her tone. 

““T suppose I don’t expect to paint at all,” said 
Alma. “I’m going to illustrate books—if anybody 
will let me.” 

** Ab should think they'd just joamp at you,” said 
Miss Woodburn. ‘“ Ah’ll tell you what let’s do, Miss 
Leighton: you make some pictures, and Ah’ll wrahte 
a book fo’ them. Ah’ve got to do something. Ah 
maght as well wrahte a book. You know we South- 
erners have all had to go to woak. But Ah don’t 
mand it. I tell papa I shouldn’t ca’ fo’ the dis- 
grace of bein’ poo’ if it wasn’t fo’ the incon- 
venience.” 

“Yes, it’s inconvenient,” said Alma; “but you 
forget it when you’re at work, don’t you think ?” 

‘Mah, yes! Perhaps that’s one reason why poo’ 
people have to woak so hawd—to keep their mands 
off their poverty.” | 

The girls both tittered, and turned from talking 
in a low tone with their backs toward their elders, 
and faced them. 

“Well, Madison,” said Mr. Woodburn, “it is time 
we should go. I bid you good-night, madam,” he 
bowed to Mrs. Leighton. ‘ Good-night,” he bowed 
again to Alma. 

His daughter took leave of them in formal 
phrase, but with a jolly cordiality of manner that 
deformalized it. ‘‘ We shall be roand raght soon in 
the mawning, then,” she threatened at the door. 

“We shall be all ready for yous) ” Alma called 
after her down the steps. 

“Well, Alma ?” her mother ahaa nis the door ~ 
closed upon them. 

“She doesn’t know any more about art,” “said 
Alma, “ than—nothing at all. But. she’s jolly and 
good-hearted. She praised everything that was bad 
in my sketches, and said she was going to take les- 
sons herself. When a person talks about taking 
lessons as if they could learn it, you know where - 
they belong, artistically.” 

Mrs. Leighton shook her head with a sigh. “I 
wish I knew where they belonged financially. We 
shall have to get in two girls at once. I shall have 
to go out the first thing in the morning, and then 
our troubles will begin.” 

“Well, didn’t you want them to begin? I will 
stay Hore and help you get ready. Our prosperity 
couldn’t begin without the troubles, if you mean 
boarders, and boarders mean servants. I shall be 
very glad to be afflicted with a cook for a while my- 
self.” 

“Yes; but we don’t know anything about these 


5 ie Che 


40 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


people, or whether they will be able to pay us. Did 
she talk as if they were well off ?” 

“She talked as if they were poor; poo’, she called 
it.” 

“Yes; how queerly she pronounced!” said Mrs. 
Leighton. “Well, I ought to have told them that 
I required the first week in advance.” 

“Mamma! If ¢hat’s the way you’re going to act—” 

“Oh, of course I couldn’t, after he wouldn’t let 
her bargain for the rooms. I didn’t like that.” 


“IT did. And you can see that they were perfect 
ladies; or at least one of them.” Alma laughed at 
herself, but her mother did not notice. 

“Their being ladies won’t help if they’ve got no 
money. It ’ll make it all the worse.” 

“Very well, then; we have no money either. 
We're a match for them any day there. We can 
show them that two can play at that game.” 

Mrs. Leighton looked at her daughter as if she 
expected a judgment to descend upon her. 


HT; 


Ane@us Beaton’s studio looked at first glance like 
many other painters’ studios. A gray wall quad- 
rangularly vaulted to a large north light; casts of 
feet, hands, faces, hung to nails about; prints, 
sketches in oil and water-color, stuck here and there 
lower down; a rickety table, with paint and palettes 
and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed comfort- 
lessly on it; an easel, with a strip of some faded 
mediseval silk trailing from it; a lay-figure simper- 
ing in incomplete nakedness, with its head on one 
side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress 
dropped before it; dusty rugs and skins kicking 
over the varnished floor; canvases faced to the mop- 
board; an open trunk overflowing with costumes: 
these features one might notice anywhere. But 
besides there was a bookcase with an unusual num- 
ber of books in it, and there was an open colonial 
writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutch- 
eoned, with foreign periodicals—French and English 
—littering its leaf, and some pages of manuscript 
scattered among them. Above all there was a sculp- 
tor’s revolving stand, supporting a bust which Bea- 
ton was modelling, with an eye fixed as simultane- 
ously as possible on the clay and on the head of the 
old man who sat on the platform beside it. 

Few men have been able to get through the world 
with several gifts to advantage in all; and most 
men seem handicapped for the race if they have 
more than one. But they are apparently immense- 
ly interested as well as distracted by them. When 
Beaton was writing, he would have agreed, up to a 
certain point, with any one who said literature was 
his proper expression; but then, when he was paint- 
ing, up to a certain point he would have maintained 
against the world that he was a colorist and su- 
premely a colorist. At this certain point in either 
art he was apt to break away in a frenzy of disgust, 
and wreak himself upon some other. In these 
moods he sometimes designed elevations of buildings, 
very striking, very original, very chic, very every- 
thing but habitable. It was in this way that he had 
tried his hand on sculpture, which he had at first 
approached rather slightingly as a mere decorative 


accessory of architecture. But it had grown in his 
respect till he maintained that the accessory busi- 
ness ought to be all the other way: that temples 


should be raised to enshrine Statues, not statues. 
made to ornament temples; that was putting the 


cart before the horse with a vengeance. This was 


when he had carried a plastic study so far that the 


sculptors who saw it said that Beaton might have 
been an architect, but would certainly never be a 
sculptor. At the same time he did some hurried, 
nervous things that had a popular charm, and that 
sold in plaster reproductions, to the profit of an- 
other. Beaton justly despised the popular charm in 
these, as well as in the paintings he sold from time 
to time; he said it was flat burglary to have taken 
money for them, and he would have been living 
wholly upon the bounty of the old tombstone-cutter 
in Syracuse if it had not been for the syndicate let- 
ters which he supplied to Fulkerson for ten dollars 
a week, 

They were very well done, but he hated doing: 
them after the first two or three, and had to be 
punched up for them by Fulkerson, who did not 
cease to prize them, and who never failed to punch 
him up. Beaton being what he was, Fulkerson 
was his creditor as well as patron; and Fulkerson 
being what he was, had an enthusiastic patience with 
the elusive, facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of 
Beaton. He was very proud of his art letters, as he 
called them; but then Fulkerson was proud of 
everything he secured for his syndicate. The fact 
that he had secured it gave it value; he felt as if he. 
had written it himself. 

One art trod upon another’s heels with Beaton. 
The day before, he had rushed upon canvas the 
conception of a picture which he said to himself 
was glorious, and to others (at the table dhéte 
of Maroni) was not bad. He had worked at it in 
a fury till the light failed him, and he execrated the 
dying day. But he lit his lamp, and transferred the- 
process of his thinking from the canvas to the open- 
ing of the syndicate letter which he knew Fulker- 
son would be coming for in the morning. He re- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


mained talking so long after dinner in the same 
strain as he had painted and written in that he 
could not finish his letter that night. While he was 
making his tea for breakfast the postman brought 
him a letter from his father enclosing a little check, 
and begging him with tender, almost deferential, 
urgence to come as lightly upon him as possible, for 
just now his expenses were very heavy. It brought 
tears of shame into Beaton’s eyes—the fine smoul- 
dering, floating eyes that many ladies admired, under 
the thick bang—and he said to himself that if he 
were half a man he would go home and go to work 
cutting gravestones in his father’s shop. But he 
would wait, at least, to finish his picture; and as a 
sop to his conscience, to stay its immediate raven- 
ing, he resolved to finish that syndicate letter first, 
and borrow enough money from Fulkerson to be 
able to send his father’s check back; or if not that, 
then to return the sum of it partly in Fulkerson’s 
check. While he still teemed with both of these 
good intentions the old man from whom he was 
modelling his head of Judas came, and Beaton saw 
that he must get through with him before he finished 
either the picture or the letter; he would have to pay 
him for the time anyway. He utilized the remorse 
with which he was tingling to give his Judas an 
expression which he found novel in the treatment 
of that character—a look of such touching, ap- 
pealing self-abhorrence that Beaton’s artistic joy in 
it amounted to rapture; between the breathless 
moments when he worked in dead silence for an ef- 
fect that was trying to escape him, he sang and 
whistled fragments of comic opera. 

In one of the hushes there came a blow on the 
outside of the door that made Beaton jump, and 
swear with a modified profanity that merged itself 
in apostrophic prayer. He knew it must be Fulker- 
son, and after roaring, “Come in!” he said to the 
model, “ That ll do this morning, Lindau.” 

Fulkerson squared his feet in front of the bust, and 
compared it by fleeting glances with the old man as 
he got stiffly up and suffered Beaton to help him 
on with his thin, shabby overcoat. 

**Can you come to-morrow, Lindau ?” 

‘No, not to-morrow, Mr. Peaton. I haf to zit for 
the young ladies,” 

“Oh!” said Beaton. 
Miss Leighton doing you ?” 

“T don’t know their namess”—Lindau began, 
when Fulkerson said : 

“Hope you haven’t forgotten mine, Mr. Lindau? 
I met you with Mr. March at Maroni’s one night.” 
Fulkerson offered him a universally shakable hand. 

‘Oh yes! Iam gladt to zee you again, Mr. Vul- 
kerzon. And Mr. Marge—he don’t zeem to gome 
any more ?” 

“Up to his eyes in work. Been moving on from 
Boston and getting settled, and starting in on our 
enterprise. Beaton here hasn’t got a very flattering 


“Wetmore’s class? Is 


41 


likeness of you, hey? Well, good-morning,” he said, 
for Lindau appeared not to have heard him, and 
was escaping with a bow through the door. 

Beaton .lit a cigarette, which he pinched ner- 
vously between his lips before he spoke. “ You’ve 
come for that letter, I suppose, Fulkerson? It isn’t 
done.” 

Fulkerson turned from staring at the bust, to. 
which he had mounted. ‘ What are you fretting 
about that letter for? I don’t want your letter.” 

Beaton stopped biting his cigarette, and looked at 
him. “Don’t want my letter? Ob, very good!” he 
bristled up. He took his cigarette from his lips, 
and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then 
looked at Fulkerson. 

“No, £ don’t want your letter; I want yow.’” 
Beaton disdained to ask an explanation, but he in- 
ternally lowered his crest, while he continued to Jook 
at Fulkerson without changing his defiant counten-. 
ance. This suited Fulkerson well enough, and he 
went on with relish: “I’m going out of the syndi- 
cate business, old man, and I’m on a new thing.” 
He put his leg over the back of a chair and rested 
his foot on its seat,and with one hand in his pocket. 
he laid the scheme of very Other Week before 
Beaton with the help of the other. The artist went 
about the room, meanwhile, with an effect of indif- 
ference which by no means offended Fulkerson. He 
took some water into his mouth from a tumbler, 
which he blew in a fine mist over the head of Judas. 
before swathing it in a dirty cotton cloth; he 
washed his brushes and set his palette; he put up 
on his easel the picture he had blocked out the day 
before, and stared at it with a gloomy face; then 
he gathered the sheets of his unfinished letter to- 
gether and slid them into a drawer of his writing- 
desk. By the time he had finished and turned again 
to Fulkerson, Fulkerson was saying: “I did think 
we could have the first number out by New-Year’s ; 
but it will take longer than that—a month longer ;. 
but ’'m not sorry, for the holidays kill everything ; 
and by February, or the middle of February, people 
will get their breath again, and begin to look round 
and ask what’s new. Then we’ll reply in the lan- 
guage of Shakespeare and Milton, “Avery Other 
Week ; and don’t you forget it.” He took down his 
leg and asked, ‘‘ Got a pipe of ’baccy anywhere ?” 

Beaton nodded at a clay stem sticking out of a. 
Japanese vase of bronze on his mantel. ‘‘ There’s 
yours,” he said; and Fulkerson said, ‘‘ Thanks,’” 
and filled the pipe, and sat down and began to 
smoke tranquilly. 

Beaton saw that he would have to speak now. 
“And what do you want with me?” 

“You? Oh yes!” Fulkerson humorously dram- 
atized a return to himself from a pensive absence. 
‘Want you for the art department.” 

Beaton shook his head. ‘Tm not your man, 
Fulkerson,” he said, compassionately, ‘You want 


42 A Hazard of 
a more practical hand; one that’s in touch with 
what’s going. I’m getting further and further 
away from this century and its clap-trap. I don’t 
believe in your enterprise; I don’t respect it; and 
I won’t have anything to do with it. It would— 
choke me, that kind of thing.” 

“That’s all right,” said Fulkerson. He esteemed, 
a man who was not going to let himself go cheap. 
“Or if it isn’t, we can make it. You and March will 
pull together first-rate. I don’t care how much 
ideal you put into the thing; the more the better. 
I can look after the other end of the schooner my- 
self.” 

‘You don’t understand me,” said Beaton. “I’m 
not trying to get a rise out of you. I’m in earnest. 
What you want is some man who can have patience 
with mediocrity putting on the style of genius, and 
with genius turning mediocrity on his hands. I 
haven’t any luck with men; I don’t get on with 
them; I’m not popular.” Beaton recognized the 
fact with the satisfaction which it somehow always 
brings to human pride. 

“So much the better!” Fulkerson was ready 
for him at this point. “I don’t want you to work 
the old established racket—the reputations. When 
I want them I’ll go to them with a pocketful of rocks 
—knock-down argument. But my idea is to deal 
with the volunteer material. Look at the way the 
periodicals are carried on now! Names! names! 
names! In a country that’s just boiling over with 
literary and artistic ability of every kind the new 
fellows have no chance. The editors all engage 
their material. I don’t believe there are fifty vol- 
unteer contributions printed in a year in all the 
New York magazines. It’s all wrong; it’s suicidal. 
very Other Week is going back to the good old 
anonymous system, the only fair system. It’s work- 
ed well in literature, and it will work well in 
art.” 

“Tt won’t work well in art,” said Beaton. ‘There 
you have a totally different set of conditions. What 
you'll get by inviting volunteer illustrations will be 
a lot of amateur trash. And how are you going to 
submit your literature for illustration? It can’t be 
done. At any rate, J won’t undertake to do it.” 

“We'll get up a School of Illustration,” said Ful- 
kerson, with cynical security. ‘You can read the 
things and explain ’em, and your pupils can make 


New Fortunes. 


their sketches under your eye. They wouldn’t be 
much further out than most illustrations are if they 
never knew what they were illustrating. You might 
select from what comes in and make up a sort of 
pictorial variations to the literature without any par- 
ticular reference to it. Well, I understand you to 
accept ?” 

‘No, you don’t.” 

“That is, to consent to help us with your advice 
and criticism. That’s all I want. It won’t commit 
you to anything; and you can be as anonymous as 
anybody.” At the door Fulkerson added: ‘“ By-the- 
way, the new man—the fellow that’s taken my old 
syndicate business—will want you to keep on; but 
I guess he’s going to try to beat you down on the 
price of the letters. He’s going in for retrenchment. 
I brought along a check for this one; I’m to pay 
for that.” He offered Beaton an envelope. 

“T can’t take it, Fulkerson. The letter’s paid for 
already.” Fulkerson stepped forward and laid the 
envelope on the table among the tubes of paint. 

“It isn’t the letter merely. I thought you 
wouldn’t object to a little advance on your Hvery 
Other Week work till you kind of got started.” 

Beaton remained inflexible. “It can’t be done, 


Fulkerson. Don’t I tell you I can’t sell myself out 
to a thing I don’t believe in? Can’t you understand 
that ?” 


“Oh yes, I can understand that first-rate. I 
don’t want to buy you; I want to borrow you. It’s 
all right. See? Come round when’ you can; I'd 
like to introduce you to old March. That’s going to 
be our address.” He put a card on the table beside 
the envelope, and Beaton allowed him to go with- 
out making him take the check back. He had re- 
membered his father’s plea; that unnerved him, and 
he promised himself again to return his father’s 
poor little check, and to work on that picture and 
give it to Fulkerson for the check he had left and 
for his back debts. He resolved to go to work on 
the picture at once; he had set his palette for it; 
but first he looked at Fulkerson’s check. It was 
for only fifty dollars, and the canny Scotch blood 
in Beaton rebelled ; he could not let this picture go 
for any such money; he felt a little like a man 
whose generosity has been trifled with. The con- 
flict of emotions broke him up, and he could not 
work. 


IV. 


Tue day wasted away in Beaton’s hands; at half 
past four o’clock he went out to tea at the house 
of a lady who was At Home that afternoon from four 
till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession 
of one of those other selves, of which we each have 
several about us, and was again the laconic, staccato, 
rather worldlified young artist whose moments of a 


controlled utterance and a certain distinction of 
manner had commended him to Mrs. Horn’s fancy in 
the summer at St. Barnaby. 

Mrs. Horn’s rooms were large, and they never 
seemed very full, though this perhaps was because 
people were always so quiet. The ladies, who out- 
numbered the men ten to one, as they always do 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


at a New York tea, were dressed in sympathy with 
the low tone every one spoke in, and with the sub- 
dued light, which gave a crepuscular uncertainty 
to the few objects, the dim pictures, the unexcited 
upholstery, of the rooms. One breathed free of 
‘bric-A-brac there, and the new-comer breathed soft- 
ly as one does on going into church after service has 
begun. This might be a.suggestion from the voice- 
less behavior of the man-servant who let you in, 
but it was also because Mrs. Horn’s At Home was 
‘a ceremony, a decorum, and not a festival. At far 
greater houses there was more gayety, at richer 
thouses there was more freedom; the suppression 
-at Mrs. Horn’s was a personal, not a social, effect ; 
it was an efflux of her character—intense, silentious, 
‘vague, but very correct. 

Beaton easily found his way to her around the 
‘grouped skirts and among the detached figures, and 
received a pressure of welcome from the hand which 
-she momentarily relaxed from the teapot. She sat 
behind a table put crosswise of a remote corner, and 
offered tea to people whom a niece of hers received 
provisionally or sped finally in the outer room. 
They did not usually take tea, and when they did 
they did not usually drink it ; but Beaton was fever- 
ishly glad of his cup; he took rum and lemon in 
it, and stood talking at Mrs. Horn’s side till the next 
arrival should displace him: he talked in his French 
manner. 

“T have been hoping to see you,” she said. “TI 


wanted to ask you about the Leightons. Did they 
‘really come?” 
“T believe so. They arein town—yes. I haven't 


-seen them.” 

“Then you don’t know how they’re getting on— 
that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor 
Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing 
-on a rash experiment. Do you know where they 
are ?” 

“Tn West Eleventh Street somewhere. 
Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore’s class.” 

“T must look them up. Do you know their num- 
‘ber ?” 

“Not at the moment. I can find out.” 

“Do,” said Mrs. Horn. “What courage they 
must have, to plunge into New York as they’ve 
done! I really didn’t think they would. I wonder 
if they’ve succeeded in getting anybody into their 
house yet?” 

“J don’t know,” said Beaton. 

“J discouraged their coming all I could,” she 
sighed, ‘(and I suppose you did too. But it’s quite 
useless trying to make people in a place like St. 
Barnaby understand how it is in town.” 

“Yes,” said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while 
inwardly he tried to believe that he had really dis- 
couraged the Leightons from coming to New York. 
Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call 
‘Mrs. Horn in his heart a fraud. 


Miss 


43 


“Yes,” she went on. “It is very, very hard. 
And when they won’t understand, and rush on their 
doom, you feel that they are going to hold you re- 
spons—” 

Mrs. Horn’s eyes wandered from Beaton; her 
voice faltered in the faded interest of her remark, 
and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting a 
lady who came up and stretched her glove across 
the teacups. 

Beaton got himself away and out of the house 
with a much briefer adieu to the niece than he had 
meant to make. The patronizing compassion of Mrs. 
Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation 
toward her, toward himself. There was no reason 
why he should not have ignored them as he had 
done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature 
to be careless, and he had been spoiled into reckless- 
ness ; he neglected everybody, and only remembered 
them when it suited his whim or his convenience ; 
but he fiercely resented the inattention of others tow- 
ard himself. He had no scruple about breaking 
an engagement or failing to keep an appointment; 
he made promises, without thinking of their fulfil- 
ment, aud not because he was a faithless person, 
but because he was imaginative, and expected at 
the time to do what he said, but was fickle, and so 
did not. As most of his shortcomings were of a 
society sort, no great harm was done to anybody 
else. He had contracted somewhat the circle of his 
acquaintance by what some people called his rude- 
ness, but most people treated it as his oddity, and 
were patient with it. One lady said she valued his 
coming when he said he would come because it had 
the charm of the unexpected. ‘‘ Only it shows that 
it isn’t always the unexpected that happens,” she 
explained. 

It did not occur to him that his behavior was 
immoral; he did not realize that it was creating a 
reputation if not a character for him. While we 
are still young we do not realize that our actions 
have this effect. It seems to us that people will 
judge us from what we think and feel. Later we 
find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it 
out too late; some of us never find it out at all. 

In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Bea- 
ton had no present intention of looking them up or 
sending Mrs. Horn their address. As a matter of 
fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet 
Mr. Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where 
he dined, and he got it of the painter for himself. 
He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting 
on; but Wetmore launched. out, with Alma for a 
tacit text, on the futility of women generally going 
in for art. ‘Even when they have talent they’ve 
got too much against them. Where a girl doesn’t 
seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount 
of chic is going to help.” 

His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as 
women always do. 


44 


‘““No, Dolly,” he persisted; ‘“she’d better be home 
milking the cows and leading the horse to water.” 

“Do you think she’d better be up till two in the 
morning at balls and going all day to receptions 
and luncheons ?” 

“Ob, I guess it isn’t a question of that, even if 
she weren’t drawing. You knew them at home ?” he 
said to Beaton. 

ics Yes.”’ 

“J remember. Her mother said you suggested 
me. Well, the girl has some notion of it; there’s 
no doubt about that. But—she’s a woman. The 
trouble with all these talented girls is that they’re 
all woman. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be 
much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've got 
Providence on our own side from the start. I’m 
able to watch all their inspirations with perfect 
composure. I know just how soon it’s going to 
end in nervous break-down. Somebody ought to 
marry them all and put them out of their mis- 
ery.” 

‘“‘And what will you do with your students who are 
married already?” his wife said. She felt that she 
had let him go on long enough. 

‘Oh, they ought to get divorced.” 

‘You ought to be ashamed to take their money, 
if that’s what you think of them.” 

““ My dear, I have a wife to support.” 

Beaton intervened with a question. “Do you 
mean that Miss Leighton isn’t standing it very well ?” 

“How do I know? She isn’t the kind that 
bends ; she’s the kind that breaks.” 

After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, ‘‘ Won’t 
you come home with us, Mr. Beaton ?” 

“Thank you; no. I have an engagement.” 

“I don’t see why that should prevent you,” said 


“SHE 7s?” cried Alma. ‘Tchk!’ She flew down- 
stairs, and flitted swiftly into the room, and flutter- 
ed up to Beaton, and gave him a crushing hand- 
shake. 

“How very kind of you to come and see us, Mr, 
Beaton! When did you come to New York? 
Don’t you find it warm here? We've only just 
lighted the furnace, but with this mild weather it 
seems too early. Mamma does keep it so hot!” 
She rushed about opening doors and shutting regis- 
ters, and then came back and sat facing him from 
the sofa with a mask of radiant cordiality. ‘How 
have you been since we saw you 2”? 

“Very well,” said Beaton. ‘I hope you're well, 
Miss Leighton ?” 

“Oh, perfectly! I think New York agrees with 
us both wonderfully. I never knew such air. And 


to think of our not having snow yet! I should 
Fe, 


~ 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Wetmore. “But you always were a punctilious cuss:. 
Well!” 

Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else- 
whom he knew came in, and he yielded to the 
threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, of in- 
clination, in going to call at the Leightons’, He 
asked for the ladies, and the maid showed him into. 
the parlor, where he found Mrs. Leighton and Miss. 
Woodburn. 

The widow met him with a welcome neatly mark- 
ed by resentment; she meant him to feel that his 
not coming sooner had been noticed. Miss Wood- 
burn bubbled and gurgled on, and did what she could 
to mitigate his punishment, but she did not feel 
authorized to stay it, till Mrs. Leighton, by studied 
avoidance of her daughter’s name, obliged Beaton to 
ask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught up her 
work, and said, “ Ah’ll go and tell her, Mrs. Leigh- 
ton.” At the top of the stairs she found Alma, and 
Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not been 
standing there. ‘‘Mah goodness, chald! there’s the 
handsomest young man asking for you down there 
youevah saw. Ah told you’ mothah Ah would come- 
up fo’ you.” 

‘“'What—who is it ?” 

“Don’t you know? But ho’ could you’ He’s 
got the most beautiful eyes, and he wea’s his hai’ in 
a bang, and he talks English like it was something 
else, and his name’s Mr. Beaton.” 

“Did he—ask for me?” said Alma, with a dreamy 
tone. She put her hand on the stairs rail, and a 
little shiver ran over her. 

‘Didn’t Ah tell you? Ofco’sehe did! And you 
ought to go raght down if you want to save the 
poo’ fellah’s lahfe; you’ mothah’s jost freezin’ him 
to death.” 


think everybody would want to come here! Why 
don’t you come, Mr. Beaton ?” 
Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. ‘“I— 


I live in New York,” he faltered. 

“In New York city /” she exclaimed. 

“Surely, Alma,” said her mother, “ you remember 
Mr. Beaton’s telling us he lived in New York.” 

‘But I thought you came from Rochester ; or was 
it Syracuse? I always get those places mixed up.” 

‘Probably I told you my father lived at Syra- 
cuse. I’ve been in New York ever since I came 
home from Paris,” said Beaton, with the confusion 
of a man who feels himself played upon by a wo- 
man. 

“From Paris!” Alma echoed, leaning forward, 
with her smiling mask tight on. ‘Wasn't it. 
Munich, where you studied ?” 

“T was at Munich too. I met Wetmore there.” 


_ 


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- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


““Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore ?” 

“Why, Alma,” her mother interposed again, “‘it 
~was Mr. Beaton who fold you of Mr. Wetmore.” 

“Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs. 
Horn suggested Mr. Ilecomb. I remember now. I 
can’t thank you enough for having sent me to Mr. 
Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn’t he delightful? Oh 
yes, I’m a perfect Wetmorian, I can assure you. 
‘The whole class is the same way.” 

“J just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner,” 
said Beaton, attempting the recovery of something 
that he had lost through the girl’s shining ease and 
steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth 
-and hard, with a repellent elasticity from which he 
was flung off. ‘I hope you’re not working too hard, 
Miss Leighton ?” 

“Oh no! I enjoy every minute of it, and grow 
stronger on it. Do I look very much wasted away ?” 
She looked him full in the face, brilliantly smiling, 
and intentionally beautiful. 

“No,” he said, with a slow sadness; “I never saw 
you looking better.” 

“Poor Mr. Beaton !”’ she said, in recognition of his 
doleful tone. ‘It seems to be quite a blow.” 

66 Oh no—"’ , 

“T remember all the good advice you used to 
give me about not working too hard, and probably 
it’s that that’s saved my life—that and the house- 
hunting. Has mamma told you of our adventures 
in getting settled? Some time we must. It was 
such fun! And don’t you think we were fortunate 
to get such a pretty house? You must see both our 
parlors.” 

She jumped up, and her mother followed her with 
a bewildered look as she ran into the back parlor 
and flashed up the gas. 

“Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show 
you the great feature of the house.” She opened 
the low windows that gave upon a glazed veranda 
stretching across the end of the room, “Just 
think of this in New York! You can’t see it very 
well at night, but when the southern sun pours 
in here all the afternoon—” 

“‘Yes, I can imagine it,” hesaid. He glanced up 
at the bird-cage hanging from the roof. ‘I sup- 
pose Gypsy enjoys it.” 

“You remember Gypsy ?” she said ; and she made 
a cooing, kissing little noise up at the bird, who re- 
sponded drowsily. ‘Poor old Gypsum! Well, he 
shart be disturbed. Yes, it’s Gyp’s delight; and 
Colonel Woodburn likes to write here in the morn- 
ing. Think of us having a real live author in the 
house! And Miss Woodburn: I’m so glad you’ve 
seen her! They’re Southern people.” 

“Yes, that was obvious in her case.” 

“From her accent? 
didn’t believe I could ever endure Southerners, but 
we're like one family with the Woodburns. I 
should think you’d want to paint Miss Woodburn, 


Isn’t it fascinating? I 


45 


Don’t you think her coloring is delicious? And 
such a quaint kind of eighteenth-century type of 
beauty! But she’s perfectly lovely every way, and 
everything she says is so funny. The Southerners 
seem to be such great talkers; better than we are, 
don’t you think ?” 

“‘T don’t know,” said Beaton, in pensive dis- 
couragement. He was sensible of being manipula- 
ted, operated, but he was helpless to escape from 
the performer or to fathom her motives. His pen- 
siveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating 
into sulky resentment when he went away, after 
several failures to get back to the old ground he 
had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved some- 
thing of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered 
upon him to the last with a keen impenetrable can- 
dor, a childlike singleness of glance, covering un- 
fathomable reserve. 

“Well, Alma!” said her mother, when the door 
had closed upon him. 

“Well, mother!” Then, after a moment, she 
said, with arush: “Did you think I was going to let 
him suppose we were piqued at his not coming? 
Did you suppose I was going to let him patronize 
us, or think that we were in the least dependent on 
his favor or friendship ?” | 

Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She 
merely said, “I shouldn’t think he would come any 
more.” 

“Well, we have got on so far without him; 
perhaps we can live through the rest of the winter.” 

“T couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was 
quite stupefied. I could see that he didn’t know 
what to make of you.” 

“He’s not required to make anything of me,” said 
Alma. 

“Do you think he really believed you had for- 
gotten all those things ?” 

“Impossible to say, ma’am.” 

“Well, I don’t think it was quite right, Alma.” 

“Tl leave him to you the next time. Miss Wood- 
burn said you were freezing him to death when I 
came down.” 

“That was quite different. But there won’t be 
any next time, I’m afraid,” sighed Mrs, Leighton. 

Beaton went home feeling sure there would not. 
He tried to read when he got to his room; but 
Alma’s looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and 
through the woof of the story like shuttles; he 
could not keep them out, and he fell asleep at 
last, not because he forgot them, but because he for- 
gave them. He was able to say to himself that he 
had been justly cut off from kindness which he 
knew how to value in losing it. He did not expect 
ever to right himself in Alma’s esteem ; but he hoped 
some day to let her know that he had understood. 
It seemed to him that it would be a good thing if 
she should find it out after his death. He imagined 
her being touched by it under those circumstances. 


46 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


VI. 


In the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had 
done himself injustice. When he uncovered his 
Judas and looked at it, he could not believe that 
the man who was capable of such work deserved 
the punishment Miss Leighton had inflicted upon 
him. He still forgave her, but in the presence of 
a thing like that he could not help respecting 
himself; he believed that if she could see it she 
would be sorry that she had cut herself off from 
his acquaintance. He carried this strain of convic- 
tion all through his syndicate letter, which he now 
took out of his desk and finished, with an increas- 
ing security of his opinions and a mounting severity 
in his judgments. He retaliated upon the general 
condition of art among us the pangs of wounded 
vanity which Alma had made him feel, and he fold- 
ed up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost 
healed of his humiliation. He had been able to 
escape from its sting so entirely while he was 
writing that the notion of making his life more and 
more literary commended itself tohim. As it was 
now evident that the future was to be one of renun- 
ciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion tinged with 
bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of recon- 
sidering his resolution against Fulkerson’s offer. 
One must call it reasoning, but it was rather that 
swift internal dramatization which constantly goes 
on in persons of excitable sensibilities, and which 
now seemed to sweep Beaton physically along tow- 
ard the Hvery Other Week office, and carried his 
mind with lightning celerity on to a time when he 
should have given that journal such quality and 
authority in matters of art as had never been enjoy- 
ed by any in America before. With the prosperity 
which he made attend his work he changed the 
character of the enterprise, and with Fulkerson’s en- 
thusiastic support he gave the public an art journal 
of as high grade as Les Lettres et les Arts, and very 
much that sort of thing. All this involved now 
the unavailing regret of Alma Leighton, and now 
his reconciliation with her: they were married in 
Grace Church, because Beaton had once seen a 
marriage there, and had intended to paint a picture 
of it some time. 

Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his 
responding with due dryness to Fulkerson’s cheery 
“Hello, old man!” when he found himself in the 
building fitted up for the Every Other Week office. 
Fulkerson’s room was back of the smaller one occu- 
pied by the book-keeper ; they had been respective- 
ly the reception-room and dining-room of the little 
place in its dwelling-house days, and they had been 
Simply and tastefully treated in their transforma- 
tion into business purposes. The narrow old trim 


of the doors and windows had been kept, and the 
quaintly ugly marble mantels. The architect had 
said, Better let them stay: they expressed epoch, if 
not character, 

“Well, haye you come round to go to work ? 
Just hang up your coat on the floor anywhere,” Ful- 
kerson went on. 

“Dve come to bring you that letter,” said Beaton,, 
all the more haughtily because he found that Fulker- 
son was not alone when he welcomed him in these 
free and easy terms. There wasa quiet-looking man, 
rather stout, and a little above the middle height, 
with a full, close-cropped, iron-gray beard, seated be- 
yond the table where Fulkerson tilted himself back,. 
with his knees set against it; and leaning against 
the mantel there was a young man with a singularly 
gentle face, in which the look of goodness qualified. 
and transfigured a certain simplicity. His large 
blue eyes were somewhat prominent; and his rather 
narrow face was drawn forward in a nose a little too 
long perhaps, if it had not been for the full chin 
deeply cut below the lip, and jutting firmly forward. 

“Introduce you to Mr. March, our editor, Mr.. 
Beaton,” Fulkerson said, rolling his head in the di- 
rection of the elder man; and then nodding it tow- 
ard the younger, he said, “Mr. Dryfoos, Mr. Bea- 
ton.” Beaton shook hands with March, and then 
with Mr. Dryfoos, and Fulkerson went on gayly: 
“We were just talking of you, Beaton—well, you 
know the old saying. Mr. March, as I told you, is 
our editor, and Mr. Dryfoos has charge of the pub- 
lishing department—he’s the counting-room incar- 
nate, the source of power, the fountain of corrup- 
tion, the element that prevents journalism being: 
the high and holy thing that it would be if there 
were no money in it.” Mr. Dryfoos turned his 
large mild eyes upon Beaton, and laughed with the 
uneasy concession which people make to a charac- 
ter when they do not quite approve of the charac- 
ter’s language. “ What Mr. March and I are trying 
to do is to carry on this thing so that there won't be 
any money in it—or very little; and we’re planning 
to give the public a better article for the price: 
than it’s ever had before. Now here’s a dummy 
we’ve had made up for Hvery Other Week, and as. 
we've decided to adopt it, we would naturally like. 
your opinion of it, so’s to know what opinion to 
have of you.” He reached forward and pushed tow- 
ard Beaton a volume a little above the size of the 
ordinary duodecimo book; its ivory-white pebbled 
paper cover was prettily illustrated with a water- 
color design irregularly washed over the greater 
part of its surface: quite across the page at top, and 
narrowing from right to left as it descended. In 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


she triangular space left blank the title of the peri- 
odical and the publisher’s imprint were tastefully 
lettered so as to be partly covered by the back- 
ground of color. 

“Ttg like some of those Tartarin books of Dau- 
det’s,” said Beaton, looking at it with more interest 
than he suffered to be seen. ‘‘ But it’s a book, not 
a magazine.” He opened its pages of thick mel- 
low white paper, with uncut leaves, the first few 
pages experimentally printed in the type intended to 
be used, and illustrated with some sketches drawn 
into and over the text, for the sake of the effect. 

“A Daniel—a Daniel come to judgment! Sit 
down, Dan’el, and take it easy.” Fulkerson pushed 
a chair toward Beaton, who dropped into it. 
“You're right, Dan’el; it’s a book, to all practical 
intents and purposes. And what we propose to do 
with the American public is to give it twenty-four 
books like this a year—a complete library—tor the 
absurd sum of six dollars. We don’t intend to sell 
’em—it’s no name for the transaction—but to give 
’em. And what we want to get out of you-—beg, 
borrow, buy, or steal from you—is an opinion 
whether we shall make the American public this 
princely present in paper covers like this, or in 
some sort of flexible boards, so they can set them 
on the shelf and say no more about it. Now, 
Dan’el, come to judgment, as our respected friend 
Shylock remarked.” 

Beaton had got done looking at the dummy, and 
he dropped it on the table before Fulkerson, who 
pushed it away, apparently to free himself from 
partiality. “I don’t know anything about the busi- 
ness side, and I can’t tell about the effect of either 
style on the sales, but you'll spoil the whole char. 
acter of the cover if you use anything thicker than 
that thickish paper.” 

“ Allright ; very good; first-rate. The ayes have 
it. Paper it is. I don’t mind telling you that we 
had decided for that paper before you came in. 
Mr. March wanted it, because he felt in his bones 
just the way you do about it; and Mr. Dryfoos 
wanted it, because he’s the counting room incarnate, 
and it’s cheaper ; and I wanted it, because I always 
like to go with the majority. Now what do you 
think of that little design itself?” 

“The sketch?” Beaton pulled the book toward 
him and looked at it again. ‘Rather decorative. 
Drawing’s not remarkable. Graceful; rather nice.” 
He pushed the book away again, and Fulkerson 
pulled it to his side of the table. 

“Well, that’s a piece of that amateur trash you 
despise so much. I went toa painter I know—by- 
the-way, he was guilty of suggesting you for this 
thing, but I told him I was ahead of him—and I 
got him to submit my idea to one of his class, and 
that’s the result. Well, now, there ain’t anything in 
this world that sells a book like a pretty cover, and 
we're going to have a pretty cover for Every Other 


47 


Week every time. We've cut loose from the old tra- 
ditional quarto literary newspaper size, and we’ve cut 
loose from the old two - column big - page magazine 
size; we’re going to have a duodecimo page, clear 
black print, and paper that ’ll make your mouth wa- 
ter; and we’re going to have a fresh illustration 
for the cover of each number, and we ain’t a-going 
to give the public any rest at all. Sometimes we’re 
going to have a delicate little landscape like this, 
and sometimes we’re going to have an indelicate 
little figure, or as much so as the law will allow.” 

The young man leaning against the mantel-piece 
blushed a sort of protest. 

March smiled and said, dryly. “‘ Those are the num- 
bers that Mr. Fulkerson is going to edit himself.” 

“Exactly. And Mr. Beaton here is going to sup- 
ply the floating females, gracefully airing them- 
selves against a sunset or something of that kind.” 
Beaton frowned in embarrassment, while Fulkerson 
went on philosophically: ‘It’s astonishing how you 
fellows can keep it up at this stage of the pro- 
ceedings ; you can paint things that your harshest 
critic would be ashamed to describe accurately ; 
you’re as free’ as the theatre. But that’s neither 
here nor there. What I’m after is the fact that 
we're going to have variety in our title-pages, and, 
we're going to have novelty in the illustrations of 
the body of the book. March, here, if he had his 
own way, wouldn’t have any illustrations at all.” 

“Not because I don’t like them, Mr. Beaton,” 
March interposed, ‘“‘but because I like them too 
much. I find that I look at the pictures in an il- 
lustrated article, but I don’t read the article very 
much, and I fancy that’s the case with most other 
people. You’ve got to doing them so prettily that 
you take our eyes off the literature, if you don’t 
take our minds off.” 

“Like the society beauties on the stage: people: 
go in for the beauty so much that they don’t know 
what the play is. But the box office gets there all 
the same, and that’s what Mr. Dryfoos wants.” 
Fulkerson looked up gayly at Mr. Dryfoos, who: 
smiled deprecatingly. 

“Tt was different,” March went on, “when the 
illustrations used to be bad. Then the text had 
some chance.” 

“Old legitimate drama days, when ugliness and 
genius combined to storm the galleries,” said Fulker- 
son. 

“We can still make them bad enough,” said 
Beaton, ignoring Fulkerson in his remark to March. 

Fulkerson took the reply upon himself. ‘“ Well, 
you needn’t make ’em so bad as the old-style cuts ; 
but you can make them unobtrusive, modestly re- 
tiring. We've got hold of a process something like 
that those French fellows gave Daudet thirty-five 
thousand dollars to write a novel to use with; kind 
of thing that begins at one side, or one corner, and 
spreads in a sort of dim religious style over the 


48 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


print till you can’t tell which is which. Then we’ve 
got a notion that where the pictures don’t behave 
quite so sociably, they can be dropped into the text, 
like a little casual remark, don’t you know, or a com- 
ment that has some connection, or maybe none at all, 
with what’s going on in the story. Something like 
this.” Fulkerson took away one knee from the 
table long enough to open the drawer and pull from 
it a book that he shoved toward Beaton. “That’s 
a Spanish book I happened to see at Brentano’s, 
and I froze to it on account of the pictures. I 
guess they’re pretty good.” 

“Do you expect to get such drawings in this coun- 
try?” asked Beaton, after a glance at the book, 
“Such character—such drama? You won’t.” 

“Well, I’m not so sure,” said Fulkerson, “come 
‘to get our amateurs warmed up to the work. But 
what I want is to get the physical effect, so to speak 
—get that-sized picture into our page, and set the 
fashion of it. I shouldn’t care if the illustration 
was sometimes confined to an initial letter and a 
‘tail-piece.” 

““Couldn’t be done here. We haven’t the touch. 
We’re good in some things, but this isn’t in our 
way,” said Beaton, stubbornly. ‘‘I can’t think of 
aman who could do it; that is, amongst those that 
would.” 

“Well, think of some woman, then,” said Ful- 
kerson, easily. “I’ve got a notion that the women 
could help us out on this thing, come to get ’em in- 
terested. There ain’t anything so popular as female 
fiction; why not try female art 2” 

“The females themselves have been supposed to 
have been trying it for a good while,” March sug- 
gested; and Mr. Dryfoos laughed nervously ; Bea- 
ton remained solemnly silent. 

“Yes, I know,” Fulkerson assented. “But I 
don’t mean that kind exactly. What we want to 
do is to work the ewig Weibliche in this concern. 
We want to make a magazine that will go for the 
women’s fancy every time. I don’t mean with re- 
cipes for cooking and fashions and personal gossip 
about authors and society, but real high-tone litera- 
ture, that will show women triumphing in all the 
stories, or else suffering tremendously. We've got 
to recognize that women form three-fourths of the 


reading public in this country, and go for their | 


tastes and their sensibilities and their Sex-piety 
along the whole line. They do like to think that 
women can do things better than men; and if we 
can let it leak out and get around in the papers that 
the managers of Avery Other Week couldn’t stir a 
peg in the line of the illustration they wanted till 
they got a lot of God-gifted girls to help them, it 
"ll make the fortune of the thing. See?” 

He looked sunnily round at the other men, and 
March said: “You ought to be in charge of a 
Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It’s a disgrace 
to be connected with you.” 

“It seems to me,” said Beaton, “ that you’d better 
get a God-gifted girl for your art editor,” 

Fulkerson leaned alertly forward and touched him 
on the shoulder, with a compassionate smile. “My 
dear boy, they haven’t got the genius of organiza- 
tion. It takes a very masculine man for that—a 
man who combines the most subtle and refined sym- 
pathies with the most forceful purposes and the 
most ferruginous will-power. Which his name is 
Angus Beaton, and here he sets !”” 

The others laughed with Fulkerson at his gross 
burlesque of flattery, and Beaton frowned sheep- 
ishly. “T suppose you understand this man’s style,” 
he growled toward March. 

“They do, my son,” said Fulkerson. “ They know 
that I cannot tell a lie.” He pulled out his watch, 
and then got suddenly upon his feet. 

“It’s quarter of twelve, and I’ve got an appoint- 
ment.” Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the two 
books in his lax hands. “Take these along, Michel- 
angelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitu- 
dinous mind on them for about an hour, and let us 
hear from you to-morrow. We hang upon your de- 
cision.” 

“There’s no deciding to be done,” said Beaton. 
“You can’t combine the two styles. They’d kill 
each other.” 

““A Dan’el, a Dan’el come to judgment! I 
knew you could help us out! Take ’em along, and 
tell us which will go the furthest with the ewrg 
Weibliche. Dryfoos, I want a word with you.” He 
led the way into the front room, flirting an airy fare- 
well to Beaton with his hand as he went. 


Vil. 


Marcu and Beaton remained alone together for 
a moment, and March said: “I hope you will think 
it worth while to take hold with us, Mr. Beaton. 
Mr. Fulkerson puts it in his own way, of course; 
but we really want to make a nice thing of the 
Magazine.” He had that timidity of the elder in 
‘the presence of the younger man which the younger, 
‘preoccupied with his own timidity in the presence 


of the elder, cannot imagine. Besides, March was 
aware of the gulf that divided him as a literary 
man from Beaton as an artist, and he only ventured 
to feel his way toward sympathy with him, « We 
want to make it good; we want to make it high, 
Fulkerson is right about aiming to please the wo- 
men, but of course he caricatures the way of going 
about it.” 


_ —™'-— as - 


eee ee eS ee 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


For answer, Beaton flung out, “I can’t go in for 
a thing I don’t understand the plan of.”’ 

March took it for granted that he had wounded 
some exposed sensibility of Beaton’s. He contin- 
ued, still more deferentially: ‘Mr. Fulkerson’s no- 
tion—I must say the notion is his, evolved from his 
syndicate experience—is that we shall do best in 
fiction to confine ourselves to short stories, and make 
each number complete in itself. He found that 
the most successful things he could furnish his 
newspapers were short stories; we Americans are 
supposed to excel in writing them; and most peo- 
ple begin with them in fiction; and it’s Mr. Fulker- 
son’s idea to work unknown talent, as he says, and 
so he thinks he can not only get them easily, but 
ean gradually form a school of short-story writers. 
I can’t say I follow him altogether, but I respect his 
experience. We shall not despise translations of 
short stories, but otherwise the matter will all be 
original, and of course it won’t all be short stories. 
We shall use sketches of travel, and essays, and 
little dramatic studies, and bits of biography and 
history; but all very light, and always short enough 
to be completed in a single number. Mr. Fulker- 
son believes in pictures, and most of the things 
would be capable of illustration.’ 

“TI see,” said Beaton. 

“T don’t know but this is the whole affair,” said 
March, beginning to stiffen a little at the young 
man’s reticence. 

“TY understand. Thank you for taking the trou- 
ble to explain. Good-morning.” Beaton bowed 
himself off, without offering to shake hands. 

Fulkerson came in after a while from the outer 
office, and Mr. Dryfoos followed him. ‘ Well, what 
do you think of our art editor ?” 

“Ts he our art editor?” asked March. 
‘quite certain when he left.” 

“Did he take the books ?” 

“Yes, he took the books.” 

“I guess he’s all right, then.” Fulkerson added, 
in concession to the umbrage he detected in March, 
“Beaton has his times of being the greatest ass in 
the solar system, but he usually takes it out in per- 
sonal conduct. When it comes to work, he’s a 
regular horse.” 

“He appears to have compromised for the pres- 
ent by being a perfect mule,” said March. 

“Well, he’s in a transition state,” Fulkerson al- 
lowed. “He’s the man for us. He really under- 
stands what we want. You’ll see; he’ll catch on. 
That lurid glare of his will wear off in the course 
of time. He’s really a good fellow when you take 
him off his guard; and he’s full of ideas. He’s 
spread out over a good deal of ground at present, 
and so he’s pretty thin; but come to gather him 
up into a lump, there’s a good deal of substance to 
him. Yes, there is. He’s a first-rate critic, and 
he’s a nice fellow with the other artists. They 


4 


“TT wasn’t 


49 


laugh at his universality, but they all like him. He’s 


the best kind of a teacher when he condescends to 
it; and he’s just the man to deal with our volunteer 
work. Yes, sir, he’s a prize. Well, I must go now.” 

Fulkerson went out of the street door, and then 
came quickly back. ‘“‘ By-the-bye, March, I saw that 
old dynamiter of yours round at Beaton’s room 
yesterday.” 

“What old dynamiter of mine ?”” 

“That old one-handed Dutchman—friend of your 
youth—the one we saw at Maroni’s—” 

“Oh—Lindau !” said March, with a vague pang of 
self-reproach for having thought of Lindau so little 
after the first flood of his tender feeling toward him 
was past. 

“Yes; our versatile friend was modelling him ag 
Judas Iscariot. Lindau makes a first-rate Judas, 
and Beaton has got a big thing in that head if he 
works the religious people right. But what I was 
thinking of was this—it struck me just as I was g0- 
ing out of the door: Didn’t you tell me Lindau 
knew forty or fifty different languages ?” 

“Four or five, yes.” 

“Well, we won’t quarrel about the number. The 
question is, why not work him in the field of foreign 
literature? Yow can’t go over all their reviews 
and magazines, and he could do the smelling for you, 
if you could trust his nose. Would he know a good 
thing ?” 

“YT think he would,” said March, on whom the 
scope of Fulkerson’s suggestion gradually opened. 
‘“‘He used to have good taste, and he must know 
the ground. Why, it’s a capital idea, Fulkerson! 
Lindau wrote very fair English; and he could trans- 
late, with a little revision.” 

“And he would probably work cheap. Well, 
hadn’t you better see him about it? I guess it "ll be 
quite a windfall for him.” 

“Yes, it will, Dll look him up. Thank you for 
the suggestion, Fulkerson.” 

“Oh, don’t mention it! don’t mind doing Avery 
Other Week a good turn now and then when it 
comes in my way.” Fulkerson went out again, and 
this time March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos. 

‘‘Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home 
when your sisters called the other day. She wished 
me to ask if they had any afternoon in particular. 
There was none on your mother’s card.” 

“No, sir,” said the young man, with a flush of 
embarrassment that seemed habitual with him. 
“She has no day. She’s at home almost every day. 
She hardly ever goes out.” 

‘““Might we come some evening?’ March asked. 
‘““We should be very glad to do that, if she would 
excuse the informality. Then I could come with 
Mrs. March.” 

‘‘ Mother isn’t very formal,” said the young man. 
“She would be very glad to see you.” 

“Then we'll come some night this week, if you 


50 ‘A Hazard of 
will let us. When do you expect your father 
back ?” 


“Not much before Christmas. He’s trying to 
settle up some things at Moffitt.” 

“And what do you think of our art editor?” 
asked March, with a smile, for the change of subject. 

“Oh, I don’t know much about such things,” said 
the young man, with another of his embarrassed 
flushes. ‘Mr. Fulkerson seems to feel sure that he 
is the one for us.” 

“Mr, Fulkerson seemed to think that J was the 
one for you, too,” said March; and he laughed. 
“That’s what makes me doubt his infallibility. 
But he couldn’t do worse with Mr. Beaton.” 

Mr. Dryfoos reddened and looked down, as if 
unable or unwilling to cope with the difficulty of 
making a polite protest against March’s self-de- 
preciation. He said, after a moment: “It’s new 
business to all of us except Mr. Fulkerson. But I 
think it will succeed. I think we can do some good 
in it.” 


March asked, rather absently, “Some good?” , 


Then he added: “Oh yes; I think we can. What 
do you mean by good? Improve the public taste ? 
Elevate the standard of literature? Give young 
authors and artists a chance ?” 

This was the only good that had ever been in 
March's mind, except the good that was to come in 
a material way from his success, to himself and to 
his family. 

“T don’t know,” said the young man; and he 
looked down in a shamefaced fashion. He lifted 
his head and looked into March’s face. “TI sup- 
pose I was thinking that some time we might help 
along. If we were to have those sketches of yours 
about life in every part of New York—” 

March’s authorial vanity was tickled. ‘ Fulker- 
son has been talking to you about them? He 
seemed to think they would beacard. He believes 
that there’s no subject so fascinating to the gen- 


New Fortunes. 


eral average of people throughout the country as. 
life in New York city; and he liked my notion of 
doing these things.” March hoped that Dryfoos 
would answer that Fulkerson was perfectly enthu- 
siastic about his notion; but he did not need this. 
Stimulus, and at any rate he went on without it. 
“The fact is, it’s something that struck my fancy. 
the moment I came here; I found myself intensely 
interested in the place, and I began to make notes, 
consciously and unconsciously, at once. Yes, I be- 
lieve I can get something quite attractive out of it. 
I don’t in the least know what it will be yet, ex- 
cept that it will be very desultory; and I couldn’t 
at all say when I can get at it. If we postpone. 
the first number till February I might get a little. 
paper into that. Yes, I think it might be a good. 
thing for us,’ March said, with modest self-appre- 
ciation. 

‘““Tf you can make the comfortable people under- 
stand how the uncomfortable people live, it will 
be a very good thing, Mr. March. Sometimes it 
seems to me that the only trouble is that we don’t 
know one another well enough; and that the first 
thing is to do this.” The young fellow spoke with. 
the seriousness in which the beauty of his face 
resided. When he laughed his face looked weak,. 
even silly. It seemed to be a sense of this that 
made him hang his head or turn it away at such times. 

“That’s true,” said March, from the surface only. 
“And then, those phases of low life are immense- 
ly picturesque. Of course we must try to get the 
contrasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. 
That won’t be so easy. You can’t penetrate to the 
dinner party of a millionaire under the wing of a 
detective as you could to a carouse in Mulberry 
Street, or to his children’s nursery with a philan- 
thropist as you can to a street boys’ lodging-house.” 
March laughed, and again the young man turned. 
his head away. “Still, something can be done in 
that way by tact and patience.” 


ALE 


Tat evening March went with his wife to return 
the call of the Dryfoos ladies. On their way uptown 
in the Elevated he told her of his talk with young 
Dryfoos. ‘I confess I was a little ashamed before 
him afterward for having looked at the matter so 
entirely from the esthetic point of view. But of 
course, you know, if I went to work at those things 
with an ethical intention explicitly in mind, I should 
spoil them.” 

“Of course,” said his wife. She had always heard 
him say something of this kind about such things. 

He went on: “ But I suppose that’s just the point 
that such a nature as young Dryfoos’s can’t get hold 
of, or keep hold of. We're a queer lot, down there, 


Isabel—perfect menagerie. If it hadn’t been that. 
Fulkerson got us together, and really seems to know 
what he did it for, I should say he was the oddest. 
stick among us. But when I think of myself and 
my own crankiness for the literary department; and. 
young Dryfoos, who ought really to be in the pulpit, 
or a monastery, or something, for publisher; and 
that young Beaton, who probably hasn’t a moral 
fibre in his composition, for the art man, I don’t. 
know but we could give Fulkerson odds and still 
beat him in oddity.” 

His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of 
renunciation, of monition. ‘“ Well, I’m glad you. 
can feel so light about it, Basil.” 


A Hazard of 


“Light? I feel gay! With Fulkerson at the 
helm, I tell you the rocks and the lee shore had 
better keep out of the way.” He laughed with 
pleasure in his metaphor. ‘Just when you think 
Fulkerson has taken leave of his senses he says or 
does something that shows he is on the most inti- 
mate and inalienable terms with them all the time. 
You know how I’ve been worrying over those for- 
eign periodicals, and. trying to get some translation 
from them for the first number? Well, Fulkerson 
has brought his centipedal mind to bear on the sub- 
ject, and he’s suggested that old German friend of 
mine I was telling you of—the one I met in the res- 
taurant—the friend of my youth.” 

“Do you think fe could do it?” asked Mrs. 
March, sceptically. 

““He’s a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and 
he’s the very man for the work, and I was ashamed I 
hadn’t thought of him myself, for I suspect he needs 
the work.” 

“Well, be careful how you get mixed up with 
him, then, Basil,” said his wife, who had the natural 
misgiving concerning the friends of her husband’s 
youth that all wives have. ‘‘ You know the Ger- 
mans are so unscrupulously dependent. You don’t 
know anything about him now.” 

“Ym not afraid of Lindau,” said March. “He 
was the best and kindest man I ever saw, the most 
high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand 
in the war that helped to save us and keep us pos- 
sible, and that stump of his is character enough for 
me) 

“Oh, you don’t think I could have meant any- 
thing against him!” said Mrs. March, with the ten- 
der fervor that every woman who lived in the time 
of the war must feel for those who suffered in it. 
“ All that I meant was that I hoped you would not get 
mixed up with him too much. You’re so apt to 
be carried away by your impulses.” « 

“They didn’t carry me very far away in the direc- 
tion of poor old Lindau, ’m ashamed to think,” said 
March. “I meant all sorts of fine things by him 
after I met him; and then I forgot him, and I had 
to be reminded of him by Fulkerson.” 

She did not answer him, and he fell into a re- 
morseful reverie, in which he rehabilitated Lindau 
anew, and provided handsomely for his oldage. He 
got him buried with military honors, and had a 
shaft raised over him, with a medallion likeness by 
Beaton and an epitaph by himself, by the time 
they reached Forty-second Street; there was no 
time to write Lindau’s life, however briefly, before 
the train stopped. 

They had to walk up four blocks and then half a 
block across before they came to the indistinctive 
brownstone house where the Dryfooses lived. It 
was larger than some in the same block, but the 
next neighborhood of a huge apartment-house 


New Fortunes. 51 
dwarfed it again. March thought he recognized the 
very flat in which he had disciplined the surly jani- 
tor, but he did not tell his wife; he made her notice 
the transition character of the street, which had 
been mostly built up in apartment-houses, with here 
and there a single dwelling dropped far down be- 
neath and beside them, to that jag-toothed effect on 
the sky-line so often observable in such New York 
streets. “I don’t know exactly what the old gentle- 
man bought here for,” he said, as they waited on the 
steps after ringing, “unless he expects to turn it into 
flats by-and-by. Otherwise, I don’t believe he’ll get 
his money back.” 

An Irish serving-man, with a certain surprise that 
delayed him, said the ladies were at home, and let 
the Marches in, and then carried their cards up- 
stairs. The drawing-room, where he said they could 
sit down while he went on this errand, was deli- 
cately decorated in white and gold, and furnished 
with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was 
nothing to object to the satin furniture, the pale 
soft rich carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and 
china bric-a-brac, except that their costliness was 
too evident; everything in the room meant money 
too plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recog- 
nized this in the hoarse whispers which people can- 
not get their voices above when they try to talk away 
the interval of waiting in such circumstances; they 
conjectured from what they had heard of the Dry- 
fooses that this tasteful luxury in no wise expressed 
their civilization. ‘ Though when you come to that,” 
said March, ‘I don’t know that Mrs. Green’s gim- 
crackery expresses ours,” 

‘Well, Basil, [didn’t take the gimcrackery. That 
was your—” 

The rustle of skirts on the stairs without arrested 
Mrs, March in the well- merited punishment which 
she never failed to inflict upon her husband when 
the question of the gimcrackery—they always called 
it that—came up. She rose at the entrance of a 
bright-looking, pretty-looking, mature, youngish lady, 
in biack silk of a neutral implication, who put out 
her hand to her, and said, with a very cheery, very 
lady-like accent, “‘ Mrs. March ?” and then added to 
both of them, while she shook hands with March, 
and before they could get the name out of their 
mouths, ‘‘ No, not Miss Dryfoos! Neither of them; 
nor Mrs. Dryfoos. Mrs. Mandel. The ladies will be 
down in a moment. Won’t you throw off your 
sacque, Mrs. March? Tm afraid it’s rather warm 
here, coming from the outside.” 

“T will throw it back, if you’ll allow me,” said 
Mrs. March, with a sort of provisionality, as if, pend- 
ing some uncertainty as to Mrs. Mandel’s quality and 
authority, she did not feel herself justified in going 
further. 

But if she did not know about Mrs. Mandel, Mrs. 
Mandel seemed to know about her, “ Oh, well, do!” 


52 A Hazard of 
she said, with a sort of recognition of the propriety 
of her caution. ‘I hope you are feeling a little at 
home in New York. We heard so much of your 
trouble in getting a flat, from Mr. Fulkerson.” 

“Well, a true Bostonian doesn’t give up quite so 
soon,” said Mrs. March. “ But I will say New York 
doesn’t seem so far away, now we’re here.” 

“T’m sure you'll like it. Every one does.” Mrs. 
Mandel added to March, “It’s very sharp out, isn’t 
it?” 

“Rather sharp. But after our Boston winters I 
don’t know but I ought to repudiate the word.” 

“ Ah, wait till you’ve been here through March !” 
said Mrs. Mandel. She began with him, but skilfully 
transferred the close of her remark, and the little 
smile of menace that went with it, to his wife. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. March, “or April, either. Talk 
about our east winds !” 

“Oh, I’m sure they can’t be worse than our 
winds,” Mrs. Mandel returned, caressingly. 

“Tf we escape New York pneumonia,” March 
laughed, “it will be only to fall a prey to New York 
malaria as soon as the frost is out of the ground.” 

“Oh, but you know,” said Mrs. Mandel, “TI think 
our malaria has really been slandered a little. It’s 
more a matter of drainage—of plumbing. I don’t 
believe it would be possible for malaria to get into 
this house, we’ve had it gone over so thoroughly.” 

Mrs. March said, while she tried to divine Mrs. 
Mandel’s position from this statement, “It’s certain- 
ly the first duty.” 

“Tf Mrs. March could have had her way, we should 
have had the drainage of our whole ward put in 
order,” said her husband, “ before we ventured to 
take a furnished apartment for the winter.” 

Mrs. Mandel looked discreetly at Mrs. March for 
permission to laugh at this, but at the same mo- 
ment both ladies became preoccupied with a second 
rustling on the stairs. 

Two tall, well-dressed young girls came in, and 
Mrs. Mandel introduced, ‘‘ Miss Dryfoos, Mrs. March ; 
and Miss Mela Dryfoos, Mr. March,” she added, and 
the girls shook hands in their several ways with the 
Marches. 

Miss Dryfoos had keen black eyes, and her hair 
was intensely black. Her face, but for the slight 
inward curve of the nose, was regular, and the small- 
ness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken 
her face, but gave it a curious effect of fierceness, 
of challenge. She had a large black fan in her 
hand, which she waved, in talking, with a slow, 
watchful nervousness. Her sister was blond, and 
had a profile like her brother’s; but her chin was 
not so salient, and the weak look of the mouth was 
not corrected by the spirituality or the fervor of his 
eyes, though hers were of the same mottled blue. 
She dropped into the low seat beside Mrs. Mandel, 
and intertwined her fingers with those of the hand 
which Mrs, Mandel let her have. She smiled upon 


New Fortunes. 


the Marches, while Miss Dryfoos watched them in- 
tensely, with her eyes first on one and then on the 
other, as if she did not mean to-let any expression 
of theirs escape her. 

‘“‘My mother will be down in a minute,” she said 
to Mrs. March. 

“‘T hope we’re not disturbing her. It is so good 
of you to let us come in the evening,” Mrs. March 
replied. 

“ Oh, not at all,” said the girl. 
the evening.” 

‘When we do receive,” Miss Mela put in. ‘We 
don’t always get the chance to.” She began a 
laugh, which she checked at a smile from Mrs. 
Mandel, which no one could have seen to be re- 
proving. 

Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan, and looked 
up defiantly at Mrs. March. ‘I suppose you have 
hardly got settled. We were afraid we would dis- 
turb you when we called.” 

“Oh no! We were very sorry to miss your visit. 
We are quite settled in our new quarters. Ofcourse 
it’s all very different from Boston.” 

“‘T hope it’s more of a sociable place there,” Miss 
Mela broke in again. ‘I never saw such an unso- 
ciable place as New York. We’ve been in this house 
three months, and I don’t believe that if we staid 
three years any of the neighbors would call.” 

“TJ fancy proximity doesn’t count for much in 
New York,” March suggested. 

Mrs. Mandel said: “‘ That’s what I tell Miss Mela. 
But she is a very social nature, and can’t reconcile 
herself to the fact.” 

“No, I can’t,” the girl pouted. 
twice as much fun in Moffitt. 
now.” 

“Yes,” said March, “I think there’s a great deal 
more enjoyment in those smaller places. There’s 
not so much going on in the way of public amuse- 
ments, and so people make more of one another. 
There are not so many concerts, theatres, operas—”’ 

“Oh, they’ve got a splendid opera-house in Mof- 
fitt. It’s just grand,” said Miss Mela. 

‘“‘ Have you been to the opera here, this winter ?” 
Mrs. March asked of the elder girl. 

She was glaring with a frown at her sister, and 
detached her eyes from her with an effort. “ What 
did you say ?” she demanded, with an absent blunt- 
ness. “Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father 
took a box at the Metropolitan.” 


“We receive in 


“T think it was 
I wish I was there 


‘Then you got a good dose of Wagner, I suppose?” 


said March. 

“What ?” asked the girl. 

“JT don’t think Miss Dryfoos is very fond of 
Wagner’s music,” Mrs. Mandel said. “TI believe 
you are all great Wagnerites in Boston ?” 

“T’m a very bad Bostonian, Mrs. Mandel. I sus- 
pect myself of preferring Verdi,” March answer- 
ed. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan again, and 
said, “I like Zrovatore the best.” 

“It’s an opera I never get tired of,” said March ; 
and Mrs. March and Mrs. Mandel exchanged a smile 
of compassion for his simplicity. He detected it, 
and added, “ But I dare say I shall come down with 
the Wagner fever in time. I’ve been exposed to 
some malignant cases of it.” 

“That night we were there,” said Miss Mela, 
“they had to turn the gas down all through one 
part of it, and the papers said the ladies were awful 
mad because they couldn’t show their diamonds, I 
don’t wonder, if they all had to pay as much for 
their boxes as we did. We had to pay sixty dol- 
lars.” She looked at the Marches for their sensa- 
tion at this expense. : 

March said: “ Well, I think I shall take my box 
by the month, then. It must come cheaper, whole- 
sale.” 

“Oh no, it don’t,” said the girl, glad to inform 
him. “The people that own their boxes, and that 
had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollars apiece 
for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever 
there’s a performance, whether they go or not.” 

“‘ Then I should go every night,” March said. 

“ Most of the ladies were low neck—” 

March interposed, “ Well, I shouldn’t go low neck.” 

The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at 
his drolling, “Oh, I guess you love to train! Us 
girls wanted to go low neck too; but father said 
we shouldn’t, and mother said if we did she wouldn’t 
come to the front of the box once. Well, she didn’t, 
anyway. We might just as well ’a’ gone low neck. 
She staid back the whole time, and when they had 
that dance—the ballet, you know—she just shut her 
eyes. Well, Conrad didn’t like that part much 
either; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we brazened 
it out right in the front of the box. We were about 
the only ones there that went high neck. Conrad 
had to wear a swallow-tail; but father hadn’t any, 
and he had to patch out with a white.cravat. You 
couldn’t see what he had on in the back o’ the box, 
anyway.” 

Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was 
waving her fan more and more slowly up and down, 
and who, when she felt herself looked at, returned 
Mrs. March’s smile, which she meant to be ingrati- 
ating and perhaps sympathetic, with a flash that 
made her start, and then ran her fierce eyes over 
March’s face. “ Here comes mother,” she said, with 
a sort of breathlessness, as if speaking her thought 
aloud, and through the open door the Marches could 
see the old lady on the stairs. 

She paused half-way down, and turning, called 
up: “Coonrod! Coonrod! You bring my shawl 
down with you.” 

Her daughter Mela called out to her, ‘ Now, mo- 
ther, Christine ’Il give it to you for not sending Mike.” 

“ Well, I don’t know where he is, Mely, child,” the 


53 


mother answered back. ‘He ain’t never around 
when he’s wanted; and when he ain’t, it seems like 
a body couldn’t git shet of him, nohow.” 

‘Well, you ought to ring for him,” cried Miss 
Mela, enjoying the joke. 

Her mother came in with a slow step; her head 
shook slightly as she looked about the room, perhaps. 
from nervousness, perhaps from a touch of palsy. 
In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs. 
March confessed in the affection with which she 
took her hard, dry, large, old hand when she was in- 
troduced to her, and in the sincerity which she put 
into the hope that she was well. 

“Pm just middlin’,” Mrs. Dryfoos replied. “TI 
ain’t never so well, nowadays. I tell fawther I 
don’t believe it agrees with me very well here; but 
he says Pll git used to it. He’s away now, out at 
Moffitt,” she said to March, and wavered on foot a 
moment before she sank into a chair. She was 
a tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and 
her gray hair had a memory of blondnegs in it like 
Lindau’s, March noticed. She wore a simple silk 
gown, of a Quakerly gray, and she held a handker- 
chief folded square, as it had come from the laund- 
ress. Something like the Sabbath quiet of a little 
wooden meeting-house in thick Western woods ex- 
pressed itself to him from her presence. 

‘Laws, mother!” said Miss Mela; “what you 
got that old thing on for? If I'd ’a’ known you'd 
’a’ come down in that /” 

““Coonrod said it was all right, Mely,” said her 
mother. ° 

Miss Mela explained to the Marches: ‘“ Mother 
was raised among the Dunkards, and she thinks it’s 
wicked to wear anything but a gray silk even for 
dress up.” 

“You hain’t never heared o’ the Dunkards, I reck- 
on,” the old woman said to Mrs. March. ‘Some 
folks calls ’em the Beardy Men, because they don’t 
never shave; and they wash feet like they do in the 
Testament. My uncle was one. He raised me.” 

“T guess pretty much everybody’s a Beardy Man 
nowadays, if he ain’¢ a Dunkard !” 

Miss Mela looked round for applause of her sally, 
but March was saying to his wife: “It’s a Penn- 
sylvania German sect, I believe—something like the 
Quakers, I used to see them when I was a boy.” 

‘“‘Aren’t they something like the Mennists ?” 
asked Mrs. Mandel. 

‘“‘They’re good people,” said the old woman, “and 
the world ’d be a heap better off if there was more 
like ’em.” 

Her son came in and laid a soft shawl over her 
shoulders before he shook hands with the visitors. 
“Tam glad you found your way here,” he said to 
them. 

Christine, who had been bending forward over 
her fan, now lifted herself up with a sigh and leaned 
back in her chair. 


54 


“I’m sorry my father isn’t here,” said the young 
man to Mrs. March. ‘‘He’s never met you yet?” 

“No; and I should like to see him. We heara 
great deal about your father, you know, from Mr. 
Fulkerson.” 

“Oh, I hope you don’t believe everything Mr. 
Fulkerson says about people,” Mela cried. ‘“‘ He’s 
the greatest person for carrying on when he gets 
going J ever saw. It makes Christine just as mad 
when him and mother get to talking about religion ; 
she says she knows he don’t care anything more 
about it than the man in the moon. I reckon he 
don’t try it-on much with father.” 

“Your fawther ’ain’t ever been a perfessor,” her 
mother interposed; “but he’s always been a good 
church-goin’ man.” 

“Not since we come to New York,” retorted the 
girl. 

‘“‘He’s been all broke up since he come to New 
York,” said the old woman, with an aggrieved look. 

Mrs. Mandel attempted a diversion. ‘ Have you 
heard any of our great New. York preachers yet, 
Mxs. March ?” 

“‘No, I haven’t,” Mrs. March admitted; and she 
tried to imply by her candid tone that she intend- 
ed to begin hearing them the very next Sunday. 

“There are a great many things here,” said Con- 
rad, “to take your thoughts off the preaching that 
you hear in most of the churches. I think the city 
itself is preaching the best sermon all the time.” 

“J don’t know that I understand you,” said March. 

Mela answered for him. ‘Oh, Conrad has got a 
lot of notions that nobody can understand. You 
ought to see the church he goes to when he does 
go. Td about as lief go to a Catholic church my- 
self; I don’t see a bit o’ difference. He’s the 
greatest crony with one of their preachers; he 
dresses just like a priest,and he says he is a 
priest.” She laughed for enjoyment of the fact, 
and her brother cast down his eyes. 

Mrs. March, in her turn, tried to take from it the 
personal tone which the talk was always assuming. 
‘“¢ Have you been to the fall exhibition ?” she asked 
Christine; and the girl drew herself up out of the 
abstraction she seemed sunk in. 

“The exhibition?” She looked at Mrs. Mandel. 

“The pictures of the Academy, you know,” Mrs. 
Mandel explained. “ Where I wanted you to go the 
day you had your dress tried on.” 

‘“‘No; we haven’t been yet. Is it good?” She 
had turned to Mrs. March again. 

“T believe the fall exhibitions are never so good 
as the spring ones. But there are some good pic- 
tures.” 

“‘T don’t believe I care much about pictures,” said 
Christine. “I don’t understand them.” 

“ Ah, that’s no excuse for not caring about them,” 
said March, lightly. “The painters themselves don’t, 
half the time.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


The girl looked at him with that glance at once 
defiant and appealing, insolent and anxious, which 
he had noticed before, especially when she stole it 
toward himself and his wife during her sister’s 
babble. In the light of Fulkerson’s history of the 
family, its origin and its ambition, he interpreted it 
to mean a sense of her sister’s folly and an ignorant 
will to override his opinion of anything incongruous 
in themselves and their surroundings. He said to 
himself that she was deathly proud—too proud to 
try to palliate anything, but capable of anything 
that would put others under her feet. Her eyes 
seemed hopelessly to question his wife’s social 
quality, and he fancied, with not unkindly interest, 
the inexperienced girl’s doubt whether to treat them 
with much or little respect. He lost himself in 
fancies about her and her ideals, necessarily sordid, 
of her possibilities of suffering, of the triumphs and 
disappointments before her. Her sister would ac- 
cept both with a lightness that would keep no 
trace of either; but in her they would sink lasting- 
ly deep. He came out of his reverie to find Mrs. 
Dryfoos saying to him in her hoarse voice: 

“T think it’s a shame, some of the pictur’s a body 
sees in the winders. They say there’s a law ag’inst 
them things; and if there is, I don’t understand why 
the police don’t take up them that paints ’em. I 
hear tell, since I been here, that there’s women that 
goes to have pictur’s took from them that way by 
men painters.” The point seemed aimed at March, 
as if he were personally responsible for the scan- 
dal, and it fell with a silencing effect for the mo- 
ment. Nobody seemed willing to take it up, and 
Mrs. Dryfoos went on, with an old woman’s severity: 
“T say they ought to be all tarred and feathered 
and rode onarail. They’d be drummed out of town 
in Moffitt.” 

Miss Mela said, with a crowing laugh: “TI should 
think they would! And they wouldn’t anybody go 
low neck to the opera-house there, either—not low 
neck the way they do here, anyway.” 

‘And that pack of worthless hussies,” her mo- 
ther resumed, “that come out on the stage, and 
begun to kick—” 

“Laws, mother!” the girl shouted, “I thought 
you said you had your eyes shut!” 

All but these two simpler creatures were abashed 
at the indecorum of suggesting in words the com- 
monplaces of the theatre and of art. 

“Well, I did, Mely, as soon as I could believe my 
eyes. I don’t know what they’re doin’ in all their 
churches, to let such things go on,” said the old wo- 
man. “It’s a sin and a shame,Z think. Don’t 
you, Coonrod ?” 

A ring at the door cut short whatever answer he 
was about to deliver. 

“Tf it’s going to be company, Coonrod,” said his 
mother, making an effort to rise, “I reckon I better 
go upstairs.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Tt’?s Mr, Fulkerson, I guess,” said Conrad. ‘He 
thought he might come;” and at the mention of 
this light spirit Mrs. Dryfoos sank contentedly back 
in her chair, and a relaxation of their painful ten- 
sion seemed to pass through the whole company. 
‘Conrad went to the door himself (the serving-man 
tentatively appeared some minutes later) and let in 


D5 


Fulkerson’s cheerful voice before his cheerful per- 
son. 

“Ah, how d’ye do, Conrad? Brought our friend 
Mr. Beaton with me,” those within heard him say; 
and then, after a sound of putting off overcoats, 
they saw him fill the doorway, with his feet set 
square and his arms akimbo. 


IX, 


“An! hello! hello!” Fulkerson said, in recog- 
nition of the Marches. “ Regular gathering of the 
clans. How are you, Mrs. Dryfoos? How do you 
do, Mrs. Mandel, Miss Christine, Mela, Aunt Hitty, 
and all the folks? How you wuz?” He shook 
hands gayly all round, and took a chair next the 
old lady, whose hand he kept in his own, and left 
Conrad to introduce Beaton. But he would not 
let the shadow of Beaton’s solemnity fall upon the 
company. He began to joke with Mrs. Dryfoos, and 
to match rheumatisms with her, and he included all 
the ladies in the range of appropriate pleasantries. 
“Tve brought Mr. Beaton along to-night, and I want 
you to make him feel at home, like you do me, Mrs. 
Dryfoos. He hasn’t got any rheumatism to speak 
of; but his parents live in Syracuse, and he’s a kind 
of an orphan, and we’ve just adopted him down at 
the office. When you going to bring the young 
ladies down there, Mrs. Mandel, for a champagne 
lunch? I will have some hydro-Mela, and Christine 
it, heigh? How’s that for a little starter? We 
dropped in at your place a moment, Mrs. March, 
and gave the young folks a few pointers about their 
studies. My goodness! it does me good to see a 
boy like that of yours; business, from the word go; 
and your girl just scoops my youthful affections. 
She’s a beauty, and I guess she’s good too. Well, 
well, what a world it is! Miss Christine, won’t you 
show Mr. Beaton that seal ring of yours? He knows 
about such things, and I brought him here to see it 
as much as anything. It’s an intaglio I brought 
from the other side,” he explained to Mrs. March, 
“and I guess you'll like to look at it. Tried to 
give it to the Dryfoos family, and when I couldn’t, I 
sold it to’em. Bound to see it on Miss Christine’s 
hand somehow! Hold on! Let him see it where it 
belongs, first!” 

He arrested the girl in the motion she made to 
take off the ring, and let her have the pleasure of 
showing her hand to the company with the ring 
on it. Then he left her to hear the painter’s words 
about it, which he continued to deliver dissyllabic- 
ally as he stood with her under a gas jet, twisting 
his elastic figure and bending his head over the ring. 

“Well, Mely, child,” Fulkerson went on, with an 
open travesty of her mother’s habitual address, ‘and 
how are you getting along? Mrs. Mandel hold you 


up to the proprieties pretty strictly? Well, that’s 
right. You know you’d be roaming all over the pas- 
ture if she didn’t.” 

The girl gurgled out her pleasure in his funning, 
and everybody took him on his own ground of privi- 
leged character. He brought them all together in 
their friendliness for himself, and before the even- 
ing was over he had inspired Mrs. Mandel to have 
them served with coffee, and had made both the 
girls feel that they had figured brilliantly in society, 
and that two young men had been devoted to them. 

‘Oh, I think he’s just as lovely as he can live!” 
said Mely, as she stood a moment with her sister on 
the scene of her triumph, where the others had left 
them after the departure of their guests. 

“Who?” asked Christine, deeply. As she 
glanced down at her ring, her eyes burned with a 
softened fire. She had allowed Beaton to change it 
himself from the finger where she had worn it to the 
finger on which he said she ought to wear it. She 
did not know whether it was right to let him, but she 
was glad she had done it. 

“Who? Mr. Fulkerson, goosie - poosie ! 
that old stuck-up Mr. Beaton of yours!” 

‘“‘He as proud,” assented Christine, with a throb 
of exultation. 

Beaton and Fulkerson went to the elevated station 
with the Marches; but the painter said he was go- 


Not 


ing to walk home, and Fulkerson let him go alone. 


“One way is enough for me,” he explained. 
“When I walk up, I don’t walk down. By-by, my 
son!’ He began talking about Beaton to the 
Marches as they climbed the station stairs togeth- 
er. “That fellow puzzles me. I don’t know any- 
body that I have such a desire to kick, and at the 
same time that I want to flatter up,so much. Af- 
fect you that way ?” he asked of March. 

“Well, as far as the kicking goes, yes.” 

‘And how is it with you, Mrs. March ?” 

“Oh, I want to flatter him up.” 

“No; really? Why?— Hold on! I’ve got the 
change.” ; 

Fulkerson pushed March away from the ticket. 
office window, and made them his guests, with the 
inexorable American hospitality, for the ride down- 
town. “Three!” he said to the ticket-seller; and 
when he had walked them before him out on the 


56 


platform and dropped his tickets into the urn, he 
persisted in his inquiry, ‘‘ Why ?” 

“Why, because you always want to flatter con- 
ceited people, don’t you?” Mrs. March answered, with 
a laugh. 

“Doyou? Yes, I guess you do. 
ton is conceited ?” 

“Well, slightly, Mr. Fulkerson.” 

“T guess you’re partly right,” said Fulkerson, with 
a sigh, so unaccountable in its connection that they 
all laughed. 

** An ideal ‘busted’?” March suggested. 

‘No, not that, exactly,” said Fulkerson. ‘But I 
had a notion maybe Beaton wasn’t conceited all the 
time.” 

“Oh!” Mrs. March exulted, “nobody could be so 
conceited all the time as Mr. Beaton is most of the 
time. He must have moments of the direst modes- 
ty, when he’d be quite flattery-proof.” 

“Yes, that’s what I mean. I guess that’s what 
makes me want to kick him. He’s left compli- 
ments on my hands that no decent man would.” 

“Oh! that’s tragical,” said March. 

‘Mr. Fulkerson,” Mrs. March began, with change 
of subject in her voice, “‘who is Mrs. Mandel ?” 

“Who? What do you think of her?” he re- 
joined. “Tl tell you about her when we get in the 
cars. Look at that thing! Ain’t it beautiful?” 

They leaned over the track, and looked up at 
the next station, where the train, just starting, 
throbbed out the flame-shot steam into the white 
moonlight. 

“The most beautiful thing in New York—the one 
always and certainly beautiful thing here,” said 
March ; and his wife sighed, “‘ Yes, yes.” She clung 
to him, and remained rapt by the sight till the train 
drew near, and then pulled him back in a panic. 

“Well, there ain’t really much to tell about her,” 
Fulkerson resumed, when they were seated in the 
car. “She’s an invention of mine.” 

“Of yours ?” cried Mrs. March. * 

‘Of course!” exclaimed her husband. 

‘“Yes—at least in her present capacity. She 
sent me a story for the syndicate, back in July 
some time, along about the time I first met old 
Dryfoos here. It was a little too long for my pur- 
pose, and I thought I could explain better how I 
wanted it cut in a_call than I could in a letter. 
She gave a Brooklyn address, and I went to see her. 
I found her,” said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, 
‘a perfect lady. She was living with an aunt over 
there; and she had seen better days, when she was 
a girl, and worse ones afterward. I don’t mean to 
say her husband was a bad fellow; I guess he was 
pretty good; he was her music teacher; she met 
him in Germany, and they got married there, 
and got through her property before they came over 
here. Well, she didn’t strike me like a person that 
could make much headway in literature, Her story 


You think Bea- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


was well enough, but it hadn’t much sand in it; 
kind of—well, academic, you know. I told her so, 
and she understood, and cried a little; but she did 
the best she could with the thing, and I took it and 
syndicated it. She kind of stuck in my mind, and 
the first time I went to see the Dryfooses—they 
were stopping at a sort of family hotel then till they 
could find a house—” Fulkerson broke off alto- 
gether, and said, “I don’t know as I know just how 
the Dryfooses struck you, Mrs. March ?” 

“‘Can’t you imagine?” she answered, with a kind- 
ly smile. 

“Yes; but I don’t believe I could guess how they 
would have struck you last summer when I first saw 
them. My! oh my! ¢here was the native earth for 
you. Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you ought 
to have seen her before she was broken to harness. 
And Christine? Ever see that black leopard they 
got up there in the Central Park? That was Chris- 
tine. Well, I saw what they wanted. They all saw 
it—nobody is a fool in all directions, and the Dry- 
fooses are in their right senses a good deal of the 
time. Well, to cut a long story short, I got Mrs. 
Mandel to take ’em in hand—the old lady as well 
as the girls. She was a born lady, and always lived 
like one till she saw Mandel; and that something 
academic that killed her for a writer was just the 
very thing for them. She knows the world well 
enough to know just how much polish they can take 
on, and she don’t try to put on a bit more. See?” 

“Yes, I can see,” said Mrs. March. 

“Well, she took hold at once, as ready as a hos- 
pital-trained nurse; and there ain’t anything readier 
on this planet, She runs the whole concern, socially 
and economically, takes all the care of house-keep- 
ing off the old lady’s hands, and goes round with 
the girls. By-the-bye, I’m going to take my meals 
at your widow’s, March, and Conrad’s going to have 
his lunch there. I’m sick of browsing about.” 

“Mr. March’s widow?” said his wife, looking at 
him with provisional severity. 

“I have no widow, Isabel,” he said, “and never 
expect to have, till I leave you in the enjoyment of 
my life-insurance. I suppose Fulkerson means the 
lady with the daughter, who wanted to take us to 
board.” 

“Oh yes. How are they getting on, I do wonder 2” 
Mrs. March asked of Fulkerson. 

“Well, they’ve got one family to board; but it’s 
a small one. I guess they’ll pull through. They 
didn’t want to take any day boarders at first, the 
widow said; I guess they have had to come to it.” 

‘Poor things!” sighed Mrs. March, “[ hope 
they'll go back to the country.” 

“Well, I don’t know. When you’ve once tasted 
New York— You wouldn’t go back to Boston, 
would you ?” 

“Instantly.” 

Fulkerson laughed out a tolerant incredulity. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 57 


Beaton lit his pipe when he found himself in his 
room, and sat down before the dull fire in his grate 
to think. It struck him there was a dull fire in 
his heart a great deal like it, and he worked out a 
fanciful analogy with the coals, still alive, and the 
ashes creeping over them, and the dead clay and 
cinders. He felt sick of himself, sick of his life 
and of all his works. He was angry with Fulker- 
son for having got him into that art department 
of his, for having bought him up; and he was bitter 
at fate because he had been obliged to use the mon- 
ey to pay some pressing debts, and had not been 
able to return the check his father had sent him, 
He pitied his poor old father; he ached with com- 
passion for him; and he set his teeth atid snarled 
with contempt through them for his own baseness, 
This was the kind of world it was; but he washed 
his hands of it. The fault was in human nature, 
and he reflected with pride that he had at iene 
not invented human nature; he had not sunk so 
low as that yet. The notion amused him; he 
thought he might get a Satanic epigram out of it 
some way. But in the mean time that girl, that 
wild animal, she kept visibly, tangibly before him; if 
he put out his hand he might touch hers, he might 
pass his arm round her waist. In Paris, in a set he 
knew there, what an effect she would be with that 
look of hers, and that beauty, all out of drawing! 
They would recognize the flame quality in her.. He 
imagined a joke about her being a fiery spirit, or 
nymph, naiad, whatever, from one of her native gas 
wells. He began to sketch on a bit of paper from 
the table at his elbow vague lines that veiled and 
revealed a level, dismal landscape, and a vast flame 
against an empty sky, and a shape out of the flame 
that took on a likeness, and floated detached from 
it. The sketch ran up the left side of the sheet and 
stretched across it. Beaton laughed out. Pretty 
good to let Fulkerson have that for the cover of his 
first number! In black and red it would be effec- 
tive; it would catch the eye from the news stands. 
He made a motion to throw it on the fire, but held 
it back, and slid it into the table drawer, and smoked 
on. He saw the dummy with the other sketch in 
the open drawer, which he had brought away from 
Fulkerson’s in the morning and slipped in there, and 
he took it out and looked at it. He made some 
eriticisms in line with his pencil on it, correcting the 
drawing here and there, and then he respected it a 
little more, though he still smiled at the feminine 
quality—a young lady quality. 

In spite of his experience the night he called upon 
the Leightons, Beaton could not believe that Alma 
no longer cared forhim. She played at having for- 
gotten him admirably, but he knew that a few 


months before she had been very mindful of him. 
He knew he had neglected them since they came to 
New York, where he had led them to expect inter- 
est, if not attention; but he was used to neglecting 
people, and he was somewhat less used to being 
punished for it—punished and forgiven. He felt 
that Alma had punished him so thoroughly that she 


ought to have been satisfied with her work, and to 


have forgiven him in her heart afterward. - He bore 
no resentment after the first tingling moments were 
past; he rather admired her for it; and he would 
have been ready to go back half an hour later, and 
accept pardon, and be on the footing of last summer 
again. Kven now he debated with himself whether 
it was too late to call; but decidedly a quarter to ten 
seemed late. The next day he determined never 
to call upon the Leightons again; but he had no 
reason for this; it merely came into a transitory 
scheme of conduct, of retirement from the society of 
women altogether; and after dinner he went round 
to see them. 3 

He asked for the ladies, and they all three re- 
ceived him, Alma not oe a surprise that inti-. 
mated iivelf to him, and- her mother with no ap- 
preciable relenting he. Woodburn, with the nee- 
dle-work which ae found easier to be voluble over 
than a book, expressed in her welcome a neutrality 
both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma. 

‘Is it snowing out-do’s?” she asked, briskly, 
after the greetings were transacted. “Mah good- 
ness !” she said, in answer to his apparent surprise 
at the question. ‘Ah mahght as well have staid in 
the Soath, for all the winter Ah have seen in New 
York yet.” 

‘““We don’t often have snow much before New- 
Year’s,” said Beaton. 

_ “Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern win- 
er,” Mrs. Leighton explained. 

“The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of 
the window and saw all the roofs covered with 
snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moon- 
laght. I was never so disappointed in mah lahfe,” 
said Miss Woodburn. 

“Tf youll come to St. Barnaby next summer, 
you shall have all the winter you want,” said Alma. 

“‘T can’t let you slander St. Barnaby in that way,” 
said Beaton, with the air of wishing to be under- 
stood as meaning more than he said. 

“Yes?” returned Alma, coolly. “I didn’t know 
you were so fond of the climate.” 

“T never think of it as a climate. It’s a land- 
scape. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Tos or 
cold.” é 
““With the thermometer twenty below, you’d se 
that it mattered,” Alma Lg ey 


58 


“You don’t mean it goes doan to that in the sum- 
mah ?”’? Miss Woodburn interposed. 

“Well, not before the Fourth of the July after,” 
Alma admitted. 

“Ts that the way you feel about St. Barnaby too, 
Mrs. Leighton ?” Beaton asked, with affected deso- 
lation. 

“T shall be glad enough to go back in the sum- 
mer,” Mrs. Leighton conceded. 

‘And I should be glad to go now,” said Beaton, 
looking at Alma. He had the dummy of very 
Other Week in his hand, and he saw Alma’s eyes 
wandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. 
“‘T should be glad to go anywhere to get out of a 
job I’ve undertaken,” he continued, to Mrs. Leigh- 
ton. “ They’re going to start some sort of a new 
illustrated magazine, and they’ve got me in for their 
art department. Tm not fit for it; I'd like to run 
away. Don’t you want to advise me a little, Mrs. 
Leighton ? You know how much I value your taste, 
and I’d like to have you look at the design for the 
cover of the first number: they’re going to have 
a different one for every number. I don’t know 
whether you'll agree with me, but I think this is 
rather nice.” 

He faced the dummy round, and then laid it on 
the table before Mrs. Leighton, pushing some of her 
work aside to make room for it, and standing over 
her while she bent forward to look at it. 

Alma kept her place, away from the table. 

“Mah goodness! Ho’ exciting!” said Miss Wood- 
burn. ‘ May anybody look ?” 

“ Kverybody,” said Beaton. 

“Well, isn’t it perfectly chawming !”’ Miss Wood- 
burn exclaimed. ‘Come and look at this, Miss 
Leighton,” she called to Alma, who reluctantly ap- 
proached. 

“What lines are these?” Mrs. Leighton asked, 
pointing to Beaton’s pencil scratches. 

“They’re suggestions of modification,” he re- 
plied. 

“T don’t think they improve it much. What do 
you think, Alma ?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the girl, constraining 
her voice to an effect of indifference, and glancing 
carelessly down at the sketch. “The design might 
be improved; but I don’t think those suggestions 
would do it.” | 

“They’re mine,” said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon 
her with a beautiful sad dreaminess that he knew 
he could put into them; he spoke with a dreamy 
remoteness of tone: his wind-harp stop, Wetmore 
called it. 

“‘T supposed so,” said Alma, calmly. 

“‘Oh, mah goodness!” cried Miss Woodburn. “Is 
that the way you awtusts talk to each othah? Well, 
Ah’m glad Ah’m not an awtust—unless I could do 
all the talking.” 

“Artists cannot tell a fib,” Alma said, “or even 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


act one,” and she laughed in Beaton’s upturned 
face. 

He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. 
quite right. The suggestions are stupid.” 

Alma turned to Miss Woodburn: ‘You hear? 
Even when we speak of our own work.” 

“Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it!” 

“And the design itself ?”’ Beaton persisted. 

“Oh, I’m not an art editor,” Alma answered, with 
a laugh of exultant evasion. 

A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a 
swarthy face, and iron-gray mustache and imperial 
and goatee, entered the room. Beaton knew the 
type; he had been through Virginia sketching for 
one of the illustrated papers, and he had seen such 
men in Richmond. Miss Woodburn hardly needed 
to say, “May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw, 
Co’nel Woodburn, Mr, Beaton 2” 

The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn 
said, in that soft, gentle, slow Southern voice without 
our Northern contractions: “I am very glad to 
meet you, sir; happy to make yo’ acquaintance. Do 
not move, madam,” he said to Mrs. Leighton, who 
made a deprecatory motion to let him pass to the 
chair beyond her; “TI can find my way.” He bowed 
a bulk that did not lend itself readily to the devo- 
tion, and picked up the ball of yarn she had let 
drop out of her lap in half rising. ‘‘ Yo’ worsteds, 
madam.” 

“Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn!’ Alma shouted. 
“You're quite incorrigible. A spade is a spade!” 

“But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young 
lady,” said the Colonel, with unabated gallantry; 
‘“‘and when yo’ mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds. 
But I respect worsteds even under the name of 
yarn : our ladies—my own mothah and sistahs—had 
to knit the socks we wore—all we could get—in the 
woe.” 

“Yes, and aftah the woe,” his daughter put in, 
“The knitting has not stopped yet in some places. 
Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. Beaton 2?” 

Beaton explained just how much. 

“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, “then you have 
seen a country making gigantic struggles to re- 
trieve its losses, sir. The South is advancing with 
enormous strides, sir.” 

“Too fast for some of us to keep up,” said Miss 
Woodburn, in an audible aside. “The pace in 
Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had to drop 
oat into a slow place like New York.” 

“The progress in the South is material now,” 
said the Colonel; ‘‘and those of us whose interests 
are in another direction find ourselves—isolated— 
isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still in 
the No’th, sir; the great cities draw the mental 
activity of the country to them, sir. Necessarily 
New York is the metropolis.” 

“Oh, everything comes here,” said Beaton, impa- 
tient of the elder’s ponderosity, Another sort of 


“ You’re 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 59 


man would have sympathized with the Southerner’s 
willingness to talk of himself, and led him on to 
speak of his plans and ideals. But the sort of man 
that Beaton was could not do this; he put up the 
dummy into the wrapper he had let drop on the floor, 
and tied it round with string while Colonel Wood- 
burn was talking. He got to his feet with the 
words he spoke, and offered Mrs. Leighton his hand. 

“Must you go?” she asked, in surprise. 

“T am on my way to a reception,” he said. She 


had noticed that he was in evening dress; and | 


now she felt the vague hurt that people invited no- 
where feel in the presence of those who are going 
somewhere. She did not feel it for herself, but 
for her daughter; and she knew Alma would not 
have let her feel it if she could have prevented it. 
But Alma had left the room for a moment, and she 
tacitly indulged this sense of injury in her behalf. 

“Please say good-night to Miss Leighton for me,” 
Beaton continued. He bowed to ‘Miss Woodburn, 
“*Good-night, Miss Woodburn,” and to her father, 
bluntly, “‘ Good-night.” 

“‘ Good-night, sir,” said the Colonel, with a sort of 
severe suavity. 

“Oh, isn’t he chawming!” Miss Woodburn whis- 
pered to Mrs. Leighton when Beaton left the room. 

Alma spoke to him in the hall without. ‘ You 
knew that was my design, Mr. Beaton. Why did 
you bring it ?” 

“Why?” He looked at her in gloomy hesitation. 
Then he said: “ You know why. I wished to talk 
it over with you, to serve you, please you, get back 
your good opinion. But Ive done neither the one 
nor the other; I’ve made a mess of the whole thing.” 

Alma interrupted him. ‘Has it been accepted ?” 

“Tt will be accepted, if you will let it.” 

“Tet it?” Shelaughed. “I shall be delighted.” 
She saw him swayed a little toward her. “It’s a 
matter of business, isn’t it ?” 

“Purely. Good-night.” 

When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Wood- 
burn was saying to Mrs. Leighton: “I do not con- 
tend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very dif- 
ficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like 
yours, to have the feelings of a gentleman. How can 
a business man, whose prosperity, whose earthly sal- 
vation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one 
else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If 
we could have had time to perfect our system at the 
South, to eliminate what was evil and develop what 
was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. 
But the virus of commercialism was in us too; it 
forbade us to make the best of a divine institution, 
and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse 
is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure 
of every value, the stamp of every success. What 
does not sell, is a failure; and what sells, succeeds.” 

“The hobby is oat, mah deah,” said Miss Wood- 
burn, in an audible aside to Alma. 


“Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn ?” 
Alma asked. 

“Surely not, my dear young lady.” 

‘But he’s been saying that awtusts are just as 
greedy aboat money as anybody,” said his daughter. 

“The law of commercialism is on everything in 
a commercial society,’ the Colonel explained, soft- 
ening the tone in which his convictions were pre- 
sented. “The final reward of art is money, and not 
the pleasure of creating.” 

“Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat 
in that, if othah people would let them pay their 
bills in the pleasure of creating,” his daughter teased. 

‘They are helpless, like all the rest,” said her fa- 
ther, with the same deference to her as to other wo- 
men. “Ido not blame them.” 

“Oh, mah goodness! Didn’t you say, sir, that 
Mr. Beaton had bad manners ?” 

Alma relieved a confusion which he seemed to 
feel in reference to her. ‘Bad manners? He has 
no manners! That is, when he’s himself. He has 
pretty good ones when he’s somebody else.” 

Miss Woodburn began, “Oh, mah—” and then 
stopped herself. Alma’s mother looked at her with 
distressful question, but the girl seemed perfectly 
cool and contented; and she gave her mind provi- 
sionally to a point suggested by Colonel Woodburn’s 
talk. 

“Still, I can’t believe it was right to hold people 
in slavery, to whip them and sell them. It never did 
seem right to me,” she added, in apology for her ex- 
treme sentiments to the gentleness of her adversary. 

“T quite agree with you, madam,” said the Col- 
onel. ‘Those were the abuses of the institution. 
But if we had not been vitiated on the one hand and 
threatened on the other by the spirit of commer- 
cialism from the North—and from Europe too— 
those abuses could have been eliminated, and the in- 
stitution developed in the direction of the mild pa- 
triarchalism of the divine intention.” The Colonel 
hitched his chair, which figured a hobby careering 
upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton, 
and the girls approached their heads, and began 
to whisper; they fell deferentially silent when the 
Colonel paused in his argument, and went on again 
when he went on. 

At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, ‘“‘And 
have you heard from the publishers about your 
book yet ?” 

Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father 
could answer: ‘The coase of commercialism is on 
that too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah 
it will pay.” 

‘““And they are right—quite right,” said the Col- 
onel. ‘There is no longer any other criterion ; and 
even a work that attacks the system must be sub- 
mitted to the tests of the system,” 

“The system won’t accept destruction on any 
othah tomes,” said Miss Woodburn, demurely, 


60 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


XI. 


Ar the reception, where two men in livery stood 
aside to let him pass up the outside steps of the 


house, and two more helped him off with his over- 
coat in-doors, and a fifth miscalled his name into the 
drawing-room, the Syracuse stone-cutter’s son met 
the niece of Mrs. Horn, and began at once to tell 
her about his evening at the Dryfooses’. He was 
in very good spirits, for so far as he could have been 
elated or depressed by his parting with Alma Leigh- 
ton he had been elated; she had not treated his im- 
pudence with the contempt that he felt it deserved ; 
she must still be fond of him; and the warm sense 
of this, by operation of an obscure but well-recog- 
nized law of the masculine being, disposed him to 
be rather fond of Miss Vance. She was a slender 
girl, whose semi-esthetic dress flowed about her with 
an accentuation of her long forms, and redeemed 
them from censure by the very frankness with 
which it confessed them; nobody could have said 
that Margaret Vance was too tall. Her pretty little 
head, which she had an effect of choosing to have 
little in the same spirit of judicious defiance, had a 
good deal of reading in it; she was proud to know 
literary and artistic fashions as well as society fash- 
ions. She liked being singled out by an exterior dis- 
tinction so obvious as Beaton’s, and she listened 
with sympathetic interest to his account of those 
people. He gave their natural history reality by 
drawing upon his own; he reconstructed their ple- 
beian past from the experiences of his childhood and 
his youth of the pre-Parisian period; and he had a 
pang of suicidal joy in insulting their ignorance of 
the world. 

“What different kinds of people you nieet !’’ said 
the girl at last, with an envious sigh. Her reading 
had enlarged the bounds of her imagination, if not 
her knowledge; the novels nowadays dealt so much 
with very common people, and made them seem so 
very much more worth while than the people one met. 

She said something like this to Beaton. He ans- 
wered: “You can meet the people I’m talking of 


very easily, if you wars to take the trouble. It’s_ 


what they came to New York for. I fancy it’s the 
great ambition of their lives to be met.” 

“Oh yes,” said Miss Vance, fashionably, and 
looked down; then she looked up and said, intel- 
lectually: “Don’t you think it’s a great pity? How 
much better for them to have staid where they 
were and what they were!” 

‘Then you could never have had any chance of 
meeting them,” said Beaton. “I don’t suppose you 
intend to go out to the gas country ?” 

“No,” said Miss Vance, amused. “Not that I 
shouldn’t like to go,” 

“ What a daring spirit! You ought to be on the 
staff of Hvery Other Week,” said Beaton. 


“The staf_—Hvery Other Week? What is it?” 

“The missing link; the long-felt want of a tie be- 
tween the Arts and the Dollars.” Beaton gave her 
a very picturesque, a very dramatic sketch of the 
theory, the purpose, and the personnel of the new 
enterprise, 

Miss Vance understood too little about business of 
any kind to know how it differed from other enter- 
prises of its sort. She thought it was delightful; 
she thought Beaton must be glad to be part of it, 
though he had represented himself so bored, so in- 
jured, by Fulkerson’s insisting upon having him. 
“And is it a secret? Is it a thing not to be spoken 
of ?” 

“Tut? altro! Fulkerson will be enraptured to 
have it spoken of in society. He would pay any 
reasonable bill for the advertisement.” 

“What a delightful creature! Tell him it shall 
all be spent in charity.” 

“He would like that. He would get two para- 
graphs out of the fact, and your name would go 
into the ‘ Literary Notes’ of all the newspapers.” 

“Oh, but I shouldn’t want my name used!” cried 
the girl, half horrified into fancying the situation 
real. 

“Then you’d better not say anything about Hv- 
ery Other Week. Fulkerson is preternaturally un- 
scrupulous.” 

March began to think so too, at times. He was 
perpetually suggesting changes in the make-up of 
the first number, with a view to its greater vividness 
of effect. One day he came in and said: “This 
thing isn’t going to have any sort of get up and howl 
about it, unless you have a paper in the first number 
going for Bevans’s novels. Better get Maxwell to 
do it.” 

““Why, I thought you liked Bevans’s novels 2” 

“So I do; but where the good of Hvery Other 
Week is concerned I am a Roman father. The 
popular gag is to abuse Bevans, and Maxwell is 
the man to doit. There hasn’t been a new maga- 
zine started for the last three years that hasn’t had 
an article from Maxwell in its first number cutting 
Bevans all to pieces. If people don’t see it, they’ll 
think Hvery Other Week is some old thing.” 

March did not know whether Fulkerson was jok- 
ing or not. He suggested, “ Perhaps they'll think 
it’s an old thing if they do see it.” 

‘Well, get somebody else, then; or else get Max- 
well to write under an assumed name. Or—I for- 
got! He'll be anonymous under our system anyway. 
Now there ain’t a more popular racket for us to 
work in that first number than a good, swingeing 
attack on Bevans. People read his books and 
quarrel over ’em, and the critics are all against him, 
and a regular flaying, with salt and vinegar rubbed 


j : 
NBs arc we 

nf HK, j i i 
oe s 9A oe (2 
eh iy He % Tks 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


in afterward, will tell more with people who like 
good old-fashioned fiction than anything else. J 
like Bevans’s things, but, dad burn it! when it comes 
to that first number, I’d offer up anybody.” 

“What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulker- 
son!” said March, with a laugh. 

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about 
the attack on the novelist. “Say!” he called out, 
gayly, “what should you think of a paper defending 
the late lamented system of slavery ?” 

“What do you mean, Fulkerson?” asked March, 
with a puzzled smile. 

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and 
pushed himself back, but kept his balance to the 
eye by canting his hat sharply forward. ‘ There’s 
an old cock over there at the widow’s that’s written 
a book to prove that slavery was and is the only 
solution of the labor problem. He’s a Souther- 
ner.” . 

“T should imagine,” March assented. 

“ He’s got it on the brain that if the South could 
have been let alone by the commercial spirit and 
the pseudo-philanthropy of the North, it would have 
worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition 
for the laborer, in which he would have been insured 
against want, and protected in all his personal rights 
by the state. He read the introduction to me last 
night. I didn’t catch on to all the points—his 
daughter’s an awfully pretty girl, and I was carry- 
ing that fact in my mind all the time too, you know 
—hbut that’s about the gist of it.” 

“Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity ?” said 
March. 

“Exactly! What a mighty catchy title, heigh? 
Look well on the title-page.” 

“ Well written ?” 

“T reckon so; I don’t know. The Colonel read it 
mighty eloquently.” 

“Tt mightn’t be such bad business,” said March, 
ina muse. “Could you get mea sight of it without 
committing yourself ?” 

“Tf the Colonel hasn’t sent it off to another pub- 
lisher this morning. He just got it back with thanks 


yesterday. He likes to keep it travelling.” 
“Well, try it. DPvea notion it might be a curious 
thing.” 


“Look here, March,” said Fulkerson, with the 
effect of taking a fresh hold; ‘I wish you could let 
me have one of those New York things of yours 
for the first number. After all, that’s going to be 
the great card.” 

“TY couldn’t, Fulkerson; I couldn’t, really. I 
want to philosophize the material, and I’m too new 
to it all yet. I don’t want to do merely superficial 
sketches.” 

“Of course! Of course! I understand that. 
Well, I don’t want to hurry you. Seen that old fel- 
low of yours yet? I think we ought to have that 
translation in the first number; don’t you? We 


61 


want to give’em a notion of what we’re going to do 
in that line.” 

‘“Yes,” said March; “and I was going out to 
look up Lindau this morning. I’ve inquired at — 
Maroni’s, and he hasn’t been there for several days. 
I’ve some idea perhaps he’s sick. But they gave 
me his address, and I’m going to see.” 

“Well, that’s right. We want the first number 
to be the key-note in every way.” 

March shook his head. ‘‘ You can’t make it so. 
The first number is bound to be a failure always, 
as far as the representative character goes. It’s 
invariably the case. Look at the first numbers of 
all the things you’ve seen started. They’re ex- 
perimental, almost amateurish, and necessarily so, 
not only because the men that are making them up 
are comparatively inexperienced like ourselves, but 
because the material sent them to deal with is more 
or less consciously tentative. People send their 
adventurous things to a new periodical because the 
whole thing is an adventure. I’ve noticed that 
quality in all the volunteer contributions ; it’s in the 
articles that have been done to order even. No; 
Pve about made up my mind that if we can get one 
good striking paper into the first number that will 
take people’s minds off the others, we shall be do- 
ing all we can possibly hope for. I should like,” 
March added, less seriously, “to make up three num- 
bers ahead, and publish the third one first.” 

Fulkerson dropped forward and struck his fist on 
the desk. ‘It’s a first-rate idea. Why not do it?” 

March laughed. ‘Fulkerson, I don’t believe 
there’s any quackish thing you wouldn’t do in this 
cause. From time to time I’m thoroughly ashamed 
of being connected with such a charlatan.” 

Fulkerson struck his hat sharply backward. ‘‘ Ah, 
dad burn it! To give that thing the right kind of 
start I'd walk up and down Broadway between 
two boards, with the title-page of Hvery Other Week 
fac-similed on one and my name and address on 
the—” He jumped to his feet and shouted, 
“ March, ll do it!” 

“ What?” ; 

“Tl hire a lot of fellows to make mud-turtles of 
ghemselves, and Pll have a lot of big fac-similes of 
the title-page, and I'll paint the town red!” 

March looked aghast at him. ‘Oh, come, now, 
Fulkerson !” 

““T mean it. I was in London when a new man 
had taken hold of the old Cornhill, and they were 
trying to boom it, and they had a procession of 
these mud-turtles that reached from Charing Cross to 
Temple Bar. ‘ Cornhill Magazine. Sixpence. Not 
a dull page in it.’ I said to myself then that it was 
the livest thing I ever saw. I respected the man 
that did that thing from the bottom of my heart. 
I wonder I ever forgot it. But it shows what a 
shaky thing the human mind is at its best.” 

“You infamous mountebank !” said March, with 


62 


great amusement at Fulkerson’s access; “you call 
that congeries of advertising instincts of yours the 
human mind at its best? Come, don’t be so diffi- 
dent, Fulkerson. Well, I’m off to find Lindau, and 
when I come back I hope Mr. Dryfoos will have 
you under control. I don’t suppose you'll be quite 
sane again till after the first number is out. Per- 
haps public opinion will sober you then.” 

“ Confound it, March! How do you think they 
will take it? I swear I’m getting so nervous I 
don’t know half the time which end of meis up. I 
believe if we don’t get that thing out by the first of 
February it ’1l be the death of me.” 

“Couldn’t wait till Washington’s Birthday? I 
was thinking it would give the day a kind of dis- 
tinction, and strike the public imagination, if—” 

“No, Pll be dogged if I could!” Fulkerson 
lapsed more and more into the parlance of his early 
life in this season of strong excitement. ‘T believe 
if Beaton lags any on the art-leg I'll kill him.” 

“Well, J ‘shouldn't mind your killing pte e 
said Seon tranquilly, as he went out. 

He went over to Third Avenue and took the 
elevated down to Chatham Square. He found the 
variety of people in the car as unfailingly enter- 
taining as ever. He rather preferred the east side 
to the west side lines, because they offered more 
nationalities, conditions, and characters to his in- 
spection. They draw not only from the uptown 
American region, but from all the vast hive of popu- 
lations swarming between them and the East River. 
He had found that, according to the hour, American 
husbands going to and from business, and American 
wives going to and from shopping, prevailed on 
the Sixth Avenue road, and that the most pictu- 
resque admixture to these familiar aspects of human 
nature were the brilliant eyes and complexions of 
the American Hebrews, who otherwise contributed 
to the effect of well-clad comfort and citizen-self- 
satisfaction of the crowd. Now and then he had 
found himself in a car mostly filled with Neapolitans 
from the constructions far up the line, where he had 
read that they are worked and fed and housed like 
beasts; and listening to the jargon of their unintel- 
ligible dialect, he had occasion for pensive question 
within himself as to what notion these poor animals 
formed of a free republic from their experience of 
life under its conditions; and whether they found 
them practically very different from those of the 
immemorial brigandage and enforced complicity 
with rapine under which they had been born. But, 
after all, this was an infrequent effect, however mas- 
sive, of travel on the west side, whereas the east 
offered him continual entertainment in like sort. 
The sort was never quite so squalid. For short 
distances the lowest poverty, the hardest pressed 
labor, must walk; but March never entered a car 
without encountering some interesting shape of 
shabby adversity, which was almost always adversity 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


of foreign birth. New York is still popularly supe 
posed to be in the control of the Irish, but March: 
noticed in these east side travels of his what must 
strike every observer returning to the city after a 
prolonged absence: the numerical subordination of 
the dominant race. If they do not out-vote them, 
the people of Germanic, of Slavonic, of Pelasgic, of 
Mongolian stock, puetumber the prepotent Celts ;. 
and March nee found his speculation centred 
upon one of these. The small eyes, the high cheeks, 
the broad noses, the puff lips, the bare, cue-filleted 
skulls, of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Chinese; the fur- 
tive glitter of Italians; the blond dulness of Ger- 
mans ; the cold quiet of Scandinavians—fire under 
ee aspects that he identified, and that gave 
him abundant suggestion for the personal histories 
he constructed, and for the more public-spirited 
reveries in triuch he dealt with the future economy 
of our heterogeneous commonwealth. It must be: 
owned that he did not take much trouble about 
this ; what these poor people were thinking, hoping, 
fdaring: enjoying, suffering; just where ane how 
they fran who and what they individually were— 
these were the matters of his waking dreams as he 
stared hard at them, while the train raced further 
into the gay ugliness—the shapeless, graceless, reck- 
less picturesqueness of the Bowery. 

There were certain signs, certain facades, certain 
audacities of the prevailing hideousness that always 
amused him in that uproar to the eye which the 
strident forms and colors made. He was interested 
in the insolence with which the railway had drawn 
its erasing line across the Corinthian front of an 
old theatre, almost grazing its fluted pillars, and 
flouting its dishonered pediment. The colossal effi- 
gies of the fat women and the tuft-headed Circassian 
girls of cheap museums; the vistas of shabby cross 
streets; the survival of an old hip-roofed house: 
here and there at their angles; the Swiss-chalet, 
histrionic decorativeness of the stations in prospect 
or retrospect; the vagaries of the lines that narrow-. 
ed together or stretched apart according to the width 
of the avenue, but always in wanton diarepard of 
the life that dwelt, and bought and sold, and rejoiced 
or sorrowed, and diaeeed or crawled, around, below, 
ee features of the frantic panorama that, 
perpetually touched his sense of humor and moved 
his sympathy. Accident and then exigency seemed 
the forces at work to this extraordinary effect; the- 
play of energies as free and planless as those that. 
force the forest from the soil to the sky; and then 
the fierce struggle for survival, with the stronger life 
persisting over the Pit snnity the mutilation, the- 
destruction, the decay of the weaker. The a hele at 
moments pescied to him lawless, Godless; the ab-. 
sence of intelligent, comprehensive purpose in the 
huge disorder, and the violent struggle to subordi- 
nate the result to the greater good, penetrated with its. 
dumb appeal the consciousness of a man who had al- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


ways been too self-enwrapt to perceive the chaos to 
which the individual selfishness must always lead. 
But there was still nothing definite, nothing better 
than a vague discomfort, however poignant, in his 
half recognition of such facts; and he descended 
the station stairs at Chatham Square, with a sense 
of the neglected opportunities of painters in that 
locality. He said to himself that if one of those 
fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars, 
trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot- 
passengers going and coming to and from the crowd- 
ed pavements, under the web of the railroad tracks 
overhead, and amidst the spectacular approach of 
the streets that open into the square, he would have 
it down in his sketch-book at once. He decided 
simultaneously that his own local studies must 
be illustrated, and that he must come with the 
artist and show him just which bits to do, not know- 
ing that the two arts can never approach the same 
material from the same point. He thought he 
would particularly like his illustrator to render the 
Dickensy, cockneyish quality of the shabby-genteel 
ballad-seller of whom he stopped to ask his way 
to the street where Lindau lived, and whom he 
instantly perceived to be, with his stock in trade, 
the sufficient object of an entire study by himself, 
He had his ballads strung singly upon a cord against 
the house wall, and held down in piles on the pave- 
ment with stones and blocks of wood. Their con- 


trol in this way intimated a volatility which was’ 


not perceptible in their sentiment. They were most- 
ly tragical or doleful; some of them dealt with the 
wrongs of the working-man; others appealed to a 
gay experience of the high seas; but vastly the great- 
er part to memories and associations of an Irish 
origin; some still uttered the poetry of plantation 
life in the artless accents of the end-man. Where 
they trusted themselves, with syntax that yielded 
promptly to any exigency of rhythmic art, to the 
ordinary American speech, it was to strike directly 
for the affections, to celebrate the domestic ties, and, 
above all, to embalm the memories of angel and mar- 
tyr mothers, whose dissipated sons deplored their 
sufferings too late. March thought this not at all 
a bad thing in them; he smiled in patronage of 
their simple pathos ; he paid the tribute of a laugh 
when the poet turned, as he sometimes did, from 
his conception of angel and martyr motherhood, and 
portrayed the mother in her more familiar phases of 
virtue and duty, with the retributive shingle or slip- 
per in her hand. He bought a pocketful of this 
literature, popular in a sense which the most success- 
ful book can never be, and enlisted the ballad ven- 
der so deeply in the effort to direct him to Lin- 
dau’s dwelling by the best way that he neglected 
another customer, till a sarcasm on his absent-mind- 
edness stung him to retort, ‘ I’m a-trying to answer 
a gentleman a civil question; that’s where the ab- 
sent-minded comes in,” 


63 


Tit seemed for some reason to be a day of leisure 
with the Chinese dwellers in Mott Street, which 
March had been advised to take first. They stood 
about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two 
and two along the dirty pavement, with their little 
hands tucked into their sleeves across their breasts, 
aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth around 
them, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical 
sneer of faint surprise to which all aspects of our 


civilization seem to move their superiority. Their 


numbers gave ethnical character to the street, and 
rendered not them, but what was foreign to them, 
strange there; so that March had a sense of mis- 
sionary quality in the old Catholic church, built long 
before their incursion was dreamt of. It seemed 
to have come to them there, and he fancied in the 
Statued saint that looked down from its facade 
something not so much tolerant as tolerated, some- 
thing propitiatory, almost deprecative. It was a 
fancy, of course; the street was sufficiently peopled 


‘with Christian children, at any rate, swarming and 


sHrieking at their games; and presently a Chris- 
tian mother appeared, pushed along by two police- 
men on a handcart, with a gelatinous tremor over 
the paving and a gelatinous jouncing at the curb- 
stones. She lay with her face to the sky, sending 
up an inarticulate lamentation; but the indifference 
of the officers forbade the notion of tragedy in her 
case. She was perhaps a local celebrity ; the chil- 
dren left off their games, and ran gayly trooping af- 
ter her; even the young fellow and young girl ex- 
changing playful blows in a robust flirtation at the 
corner of a liquor store suspended their scuffle with 
a pleased interest as she passed. March understood 
the unwillingness of the poor to leave the worst con- 
ditions in the city for comfort and plenty in the 
country when he reflected upon this dramatic inci- 
dent, one of many no doubt which daily occur to 
entertain them in such streets. A small town could 
rarely offer anything comparable to it, and the coun- 
try never. He said that if life appeared so hopeless 
to him as it must to the dwellers in that neighbor- 
hood he should not himself be willing to quit its dis- 
tractions, its alleviations, for the vague promise of 
unknown good in the distance somewhere. 

But what charm could such a man as Lindau find 
in such a place? It could not be that he lived 
there because he was too poor to live elsewhere: 
with a shutting of the heart, March refused to be- 
lieve this as he looked round on these evidences of 
misery, and remembered his neglect of his friend, 
Lindau could probably find as cheap a lodging in 
some decenter part of the town; and in fact there 
was some amelioration of the prevailing squalor in 
the quieter street which he turned into from Mott. 

A woman with a tied-up face of toothache opened 
the door for him when he pulled, with a shiver of 
foreboding, the bell knob, from which a yard of 
rusty crape dangled. But it was not Lindau whe 


64 


was dead, for the woman said he was at home, 
and sent March stumbling up the four or five dark 
flights of stairs that led to his tenement. It was 
quite at the top of the house, and when March 
obeyed the German-English ‘“ Komm!” that follow- 
ed his knock, he found himself in a kitchen where 
a meagre breakfast was scattered in stale fragments 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


on the table before the stove. The place was bare 
and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it 
a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was 
a room with a bed in it, which seemed also to be a 
cobbler’s shop; on the right, through a door that 
stood ajar, came the German-English voice again, say- 
ing this time, “* Hier !” 


XI. 


Marca pushed the door open into a room like 
that on the left, but with a writing-desk instead of 
a cobbler’s bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat 
propped up, with a coat over his shoulders and a 
skull-cap on his head, reading a book, from which 
he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over his spec- 
tacles at March. His hairy old breast showed 
through the night-shirt, which gaped apart; the 
stump of his left arm lay upon the book to keep it 
open. . : 

“Ah, my tear yo’ng friendt! Passil! Marge! 
Iss it you?” he called out, joyously, the next mo- 
ment. 

“Why, are you sick, Lindau?” March anxiously 
scanned his face in taking his hand. 

Lindau laughed. ‘No; I’m all righdt. Only a 
lidtle lazy, and a lidtle eggonomigal. Idt’s jeaper 
to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire a-goin’ 
all the time. Don’t wandt to gome too hardt on the 
brafer Mann, you know: 


‘Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen.’ 


You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? 
Who is your favorite boet now, Passil? You write 
some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt 
to zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. 
Well, idt is goodt for zore eyess. How didt you 
findt where I life ?” 

“They told me at Maroni’s,” said March. He 
tried to keep his eyes on Lindau’s face, and not see 
the discomfort of the room, but he was aware of the 
shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, 
and the pipes and tobacco shreds mixed with the 
books and manuscripts strewn over the leaf of the 
writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of 
foreign magazines he had brought under his arm. 
“They gave me another address first.” 

“Yes. I have chust gome here,” said Lindau. 
“Tdt is not very cay, heigh ?” 

“It might be gayer,” March admitted, with a 
smile. ‘‘Still,” he added, soberly, “a good many 
people seem to live in this part of the town. Ap- 
parently they die here too, Lindau. There is crape on 
your outside door. I didn’t know but it was for you.” 

‘“Nodt this time,” said Lindau, in the same hu- 
mor. “Berhaps some other time.’ We geep the 
ondertakers bretty pusy down here.” 


“Well,” said March, ‘undertakers must live, even 
if the rest of us have to die to let them.” Lindau 
laughed, and March went on: “ But I’m glad it isn’t 
your funeral, Lindau. And you say you’re not sick, 
and so I don’t see why we shouldn’t come to busi- 
ness.” 

“‘Pusiness ?” Lindau lifted his eyebrows. “ You 
gome on pusiness ?” 

“And pleasure combined,” said March, and he 
went on to explain the service he desired at Lindau’s 
hands. 

The old man listened with serious attention, and 
with assenting nods that culminated in a spoken ex- 
pression of his willingness to undertake the transla- 
tions. March waited with a sort of mechanical ex- 
pectation of his gratitude for the work put in his 
way, but nothing of the kind came from Lindau, 
and March was left to say, “‘ Well, everything is 
understood, then; and I don’t know that I need 
add that if you ever want any little advance on the 
work—” 

“TJ will ask you,” said Lindau, quietly, ‘“andI 
thank you for that. But I can wait; I ton’t needt 
any money just at bresent.” As if he saw some 
appeal for greater frankness in March’s eye, he 
went on: “I tidtn’t gome here begause I was too 
boor to life anywhere else, and I ton’t stay in pedt 
begause I couldn’t hafe a fire to geep warm if I 
wanted it. I’m nodt zo padt off as Marmontel when 
he went to Paris. I’m a lidtle loaxurious, that is 
all. If I stay in pedt, it’s zo I can fling money 
away on somethings else. Heigh ?” 

“But what are you living here for, Lindau?” 
March smiled at the irony lurking in Lindau’s 
words. 

“Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle 
too moch of dn aristograt. I hadt a room oap in 
Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugs over on 
the west side, and I foundt”—Lindau’s voice lost 
its jesting quality, and his face darkened—“ that I 
was beginning to forget the boor !”” 

“T should have thought,” said March, with im- 
partial interest, “that you might have seen poverty 
enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village to re- 
mind you of its existence.” 

“‘Nodt like here,” said Lindau. ‘ Andt you must 
zee it all the dtime—zee it, hear it, smell it, dtaste 


“CaldAYaaINI AISNOIWAA OVdnNti,, 


NGW YUAHLO JO SGNVSNOHL 40 SaaUaNoH WO YLVdsud 


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A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


‘it—or you forget it. That is what I gome here for, 
I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I 
was nodt like these beople down here, when I gome 
down once to look aroundt; I thought I must be 
somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take my- 
‘self in time, and I gome here among my brothers— 
the beccars,and the thiefs!” A noise made itself 
heard in the next room, as if the door were furtively 
opened, and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands 
clawing on a table. “Thiefs!” Lindau repeated, 
with a shout, ‘“Lidtle thiefs, that gabture your 
breakfast. Ah! ha! ha!” A wild scurrying of feet, 
joyous cries and tittering, and a slamming door fol- 
lowed upon his explosion, and he resumed in the si. 
lence: “Idt is the children cot pack from school. 
‘They gome and steal what I leaf there on my 
daple. Idt’s one of our lidtle chokes; we onder- 
‘stand each other; that’s all right. Once the gop- 
pler in the other room there he use to chase "em; 
he couldn’t onderstand their lidtle tricks. Now 
dot goppler’s teadt, and he ton’t chase ’em any more, 
He was a Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess.” 

‘Well, it’s a sociable existence,” March suggested. 
“But perhaps if you let them have the things with- 
‘out stealing—” 

“Oh no,no! Most nodt mage them too gonceit- 
‘edt. They mostn’t go and feel themseltfs petter 
than those boor millionairss that hadt to steal their 
money.” 

March smiled indulgently at his old friends 
violence. “Oh, there are fagots and fagots, you 
know, Lindau; perhaps not all the millionaires are 
so guilty.” 

“ Let us speak German,” cried Lindau, in his own 
tongue, pushing his book aside, and thrusting his 
skull-eap back from his forehead. “How much 
‘money can a man honestly earn without wronging 
or Oppressing some other man ?”’ 

“Well, if youll let me answer in English,” said 
‘March, “T should say about five thousand dollars a 
year. Iname that figure because it’s my experience 
that I never could earn more; but the experience of 
other men may be different, and if they tell me 
they can earn ten, or twenty, or fifty thousand a 
year, I’m not prepared to say they can’t do it,” 

Lindau hardly waited for his answer. “Not 
the most gifted man that ever lived, in the practice 
of any art or science, and paid at the highest rate 
that exceptional genius could justly demand from 
those who have worked for their money, could ever 
earn a million dollars. It is the landlords and the 
merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coal 
barons (the oppressors whom you instinctively give 
the titles of tyrants)—it is these that make the mill- 
ions, but no man earns them. What artist, what 
physician, what scientist, what poet was ever a mill- 
‘ionaire ?” 

“I can only think of the poet Rogers,” said 
“March, amused by Lindau’s tirade. “But he was 


5 


65 


as exceptional as the other Rogers, the martyr, who 
died with warm feet.” Lindau had apparently not 
understood his joke, and he went on, with the 
American ease of mind about everything: “ But you 
must allow, Lindau, that some of those fellows don’t 
do so badly with their guilty gains. Some of them 
give work to armies of poor people—” 

Lindau furiously interrupted. “Yes, when they 
have gathered their millions together from the 
hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin and des- 
pair of hundreds of thousands of other men, they 
‘give work’ to the poor! They give work! They 
allow their helpless brothers to earn enough to keep 
life in them! They give work! Who is it gives 
toil, and where will your rich men be when once 
the poor shall refuse to give toil ? Why, you have 
come to give me work!” 

March laughed outright. “ Well, ’m not a mill- 
ionaire, anyway, Lindau, and I hope you won’t make 
an example of me by refusing to give toil. I dare 
say the millionaires deserve it, but I’d rather they 
wouldn’t suffer in my person.” 

“No,” returned the old man, mildly, relaxing the 
fierce glare he had bent upon March. “No man 
deserves to suffer at the hands of another. I lose 
myself when I think of the injustice in the world. 
But I must not forget that I am like the worst of 
them.” 

“You might go up Fifth Avenue and live among 
the rich awhile, when you’re in danger of that,” 
suggested March. “ At any rate,” he added, by an 
impulse which he knew he could not justify to his 
wife, ‘I wish you’d come some day and lunch with 
their emissary. I’ve been telling Mrs. March about 
you, and I want her and the children to see you. 
Come over with these things and report.” He put 
his hand on the magazines as he rose. 

“T will come,” said Lindau, gently. 

“Shall I give you your book ?” asked March. 

“No; I gidt oap bretty soon.” 

‘“‘And—and—can you dress yourself ?” 

‘‘T vhistle, and one of those lidtle fellowss comess. 
We haf to dake gare of one another in a blace like 
this, Idt iss nodt like the worldt,” said Lindau, 
gloomily. 

March thought he ought to cheer him up. “Oh, 
it isn’t such a bad world, Lindau! After all, the 
average of millionaires is small in it.” He added, 
“And I don’t believe there’s an American living that 
could look at that arm of yours and not wish to 
lend you a hand for the one you gave us all.” March 
felt this to be a fine turn, and his voice trembled 
slightly in saying it. 

Lindau smiled grimly. “You think zo? I 
wouldn’t moch like to drost’em. I’ve driedt idt too 
often.” He began to speak German again fiercely - 
“ Besides, they owe me nothing. Do you think I 
knowingly gave my hand to save this oligarchy of 
traders and tricksters, this aristocracy of railroad 


66 


wreckers and stock gamblers and mine-slave drivers 
and mill-serf owners? No; I gave it to the slave; 
the slave—ha! ha! ha!—whom I helped to un- 
shackle to the common liberty of hunger and cold. 
And you think I would be the beneficiary of such a 
state of things ?” 

“Tm sorry to hear you talk so, Lindau,” said 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


March; “very sorry.” He stopped with a look of 
pain, and rose to go. Lindau suddenly broke into 
a laugh and into English. ne 

“Oh, well, it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes ms 
goodt. My parg is worse than my pidte, I cuess. 
I pring these things roundt bretty soon. Good-by,. 
Passil, my tear poy. Auf wiedersehen!” 


Alt 


Marcu went away thinking of what Lindau had 
said, but not for the impersonal significance of his 
words so much as for the light they cast upon Lin- 
dau himself. He thought the words violent enough, 
but in connection with what he remembered of the 
cheery, poetic, hopeful idealist, they were even more 
curious than lamentable. In his own life of com- 
fortable revery he had never heard any one talk so 
before, but he had read something of the kind now 
and then in blatant labor newspapers which he had 
accidentally fallen in with, and once at a strikers’ 
meeting he had heard rich people denounced with 
the same frenzy. He had made his own reflections 
upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric, and the ob- 
vious buncombe of the motive, and he had not taken 
the matter seriously. 

He could not doubt Lindau’s sincerity, and he 
wondered how he came to that way of thinking. 
From his experience of himself he accounted for a 
prevailing literary quality in it; he decided it to be 
from Lindau’s reading and feeling rather than his 
reflection. That was the notion he formed of some 
things he had met with in Ruskin to much the same 
effect; he regarded them with amusement as the 
chimeras of a rhetorician run away with by his 
phrases., 

But as to Lindau, the chief thing in his mind was 
a conception of the droll irony of a situation in which 
so fervid a hater of millionaires should be working, 
indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man like 
Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his mon- 
ey together out of every gambler’s chance in specu- 
lation, and all a schemer’s thrift from the error and 
need of others. The situation was not more incon- 
gruous, however, than all the rest of the Avery 
Other Week affair. It seemed to him that there 
were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to its 
existence, and as time went on, and the day drew 
near for the issue of the first number, the sense of 
this intensified till the whole lost at moments the 
quality of a waking fact, and came to be rather a 
fantastic fiction of sleep. 

Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to a 
reality which March could not deny, at least in their 
presence, and the first number was representative 
of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. 
As a result, it was so respectable that March began 
to respect these intentions, began to respect himself 


for combining and embodying them in the volume 
which appealed to him with a novel fascination, 
when the first advance copy was laid upon his desk, 
Every detail of it was tiresomely familiar already, but 
the whole had a fresh interest now. He now saw 
how extremely fit and effective Miss Leighton’s dec- 
orative design for the cover was, printed in black and 
brick-red on the delicate gray tone of the paper. It 
was at once attractive and refined, and he credited 
Beaton with quite all he merited in working it over 
to the actual shape. The touch and the taste of the 
art editor were present throughout the number. As 
Fulkerson said, Beaton had caught on with the deli- 
cacy of a humming-bird and the tenacity of a, bull- 
dog to the virtues of their illustrative process, and 
had worked it for all it was worth. There were 
seven papers in the number, and a poem on the last 
page of the cover, and he had found some graphic 
comment for each. It was a larger proportion than 


_would afterward be allowed, but for once in a way 


it was allowed. Fulkerson said they could not ex- 
pect to get their money back on that first number 
anyway. Seven of the illustrations were Beaton’s ; 
two or three he got from practised hands; the rest 
were the work of unknown people which he had sug- 
gested, and then related and adapted with unfailing 
ingenuity to the different papers. He handled the 
illustrations with such sympathy as not to destroy 
their individual quality,and that indefinable charm 
which comes from good amateur work in whatever 
art. He rescued them from their weaknesses and 
errors, while he left in them the evidence of the 
pleasure with which a clever young man, or a sen- 
sitive girl, or a refined woman had done them. 
Inevitably from his manipulation, however, the art 
of the number acquired homogeneity, and there was 
nothing casual in its appearance. The result, March 
eagerly owned, was better than tho literary result, 
and he foresaw that the number would be sold and 
praised chiefly for its pictures. Yet he was not 
ashamed of the literature, and he indulged his ad- 
miration of it the more freely because he had not 
only not written it, but in a way had not edited it. 
To be sure, he had chosen all the material, but he 
had not voluntarily put it all together for that num- 
ber; it had largely put itself together, as every 
number of every magazine does, and as it seems 
more and more to do, in the experience of every 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


editor. There had to be, of course, a story, and then 
a sketch of travel. There was a literary essay and 
a social essay; there was a dramatic trifle, very gay, 
very light; there was a dashing criticism on the 
hew pictures, the new plays, the new books, the new 
fashions; and then there was the translation of a 
bit of vivid Russian realism, which the editor owed 
to Lindau’s exploration of the foreign periodicals 
left with him; Lindau was himself a romanticist of 
the Victor Hugo sort, but he said this fragment of 
Dostoyevski was good of its kind. The poem was 
a bit of society verse, with a backward look into 
simpler and wholesomer experiences. 

Fulkerson was extremely proud of the number ; 
but he said it was too good—too good from every 
point of view. The cover was too good, and the 
paper was too good, and that device of rough edges, 
which got over the objection to uncut leaves while 
it secured their esthetic effect, was a thing that he 
trembled for, though he rejoiced in it as a stroke 
of the highest genius. It had come from Beaton at 
the last moment, as a compromise, when the prob- 
lem of the vulgar croppiness of cut leaves and the 
unpopularity of uncut leaves seemed to have no 
solution but suicide. Fulkerson was still morally 
crawling round on his hands and knees, as he said, 
in abject gratitude at Beaton’s feet, though he had 
his qualms, his questions; and he declared that 
Beaton was the most inspired ass since Balaam’s, 
‘We're all asses, of course,” he admitted, in semi- 
apology to March ; ‘‘ but we’re no such asses as Bea- 
ton,” He said that if the tasteful decorativeness of 
the thing did not kill it with the public outright, its 
literary excellence would give it the finishing stroke. 
Perhaps that might be overlooked in the impression 
of novelty which a first number would give, but it 
must never happen again. He implored March to 
promise that it should never happen again; he said 
their only hope was in the immediate cheapening 
of the whole affair. It was bad enough to give the 
public too much quantity for their money, but to 
throw in such quality as that was simply ruinous; it 
must be stopped. These were the expressions of his 
intimate moods ; every front that he presented to the 
public wore a glow of lofty, of devout exultation. 
His pride in the number gushed out in fresh bursts 
of rhetoric to every one whom he could get to talk 
with him about it. He worked the personal kind- 
liness of the press to the utmost. He did not mind 
making himself ridiculous or becoming a joke in the 
good cause, as he called it. He joined in the ap- 
plause when a humorist at the club feigned to drop 
dead from his chair at Fulkerson’s introduction of 
the topic, and he went on talking that first number 
into the surviving spectators. He stood treat upon 
all occasions, and he lunched attachés of the press at 
all hours. He especially befriended the correspond- 
ents of the newspapers of other cities, for, as he ex- 
plained to March, those fellows could give him any 


67 


amount of advertising simply as literary gossip. 
Many of the fellows were ladies who could not be so 
summarily asked out to lunch, but Fulkerson’s in- 
genuity was equal to every exigency, and he con- 
trived somehow to make each of these feel that she 
had been possessed of exclusive information. There 
was a moment when March conjectured a willingness 
in Fulkerson to work Mrs. March into the advertis- 
ing department, by means of a tea to these ladies and 
their friends which she should administer in his 
apartment, but he did not encourage Fulkerson to 
be explicit, and the moment passed, Afterward, 
when he told his wife about it, he was astonished 
to find that she would not have minded doing it for 
Fulkerson, and he experienced another proof of the 
bluntness of the feminine instincts in some direc. 
tions, and of the personal favor which Fulkerson 
seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This alone 
was enough to account for the willingness of these 
correspondents to write about the first number, but 
March accused him of Sending it to their addresses 
with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy. 

Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that 
he would do that or anything else for the good 
cause, short of marrying the whole circle of female 
correspondents. 

March was inclined to hope that if the first num- 
ber had been made too good for the country at 
large, the more enlightened taste of metropolitan 
journalism would invite a compensating favor for it 
in New York. But first Fulkerson and then the 
event proved him wrong. In spite of the quality 
of the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which 
So many newspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the no- 
tices in the New York papers seemed grudging and 
provisional to the ardor of the editor. A merit in 
the work was acknowledged, and certain defects 
in it for which March had trembled were ignored ; 
but the critics astonished him by selecting for 
censure points which he was either proud of or had 
never noticed; which being now brought to his no- 
tice he still could not feel were faults. He owned 
to Fulkerson that if they had said so and so against 
it he could have agreed with them, but that to say 
thus and so was preposterous; and that if the adver- 
tising had not been adjusted with such generous 
recognition of the claims of the different papers, he 
should have known the counting-room was at the 
bottom of it. As it was, he could only attribute it to 
perversity or stupidity. It was certainly stupid to 
condemn a magazine novelty like Every Other Week 
for being novel; and to augur that if it failed, it 
would fail through its departure from the lines on 
which all the other prosperous magazines had been 
built, was in the last degree perverse, and it looked 
malicious. The fact that it was neither exactly a 
book nor a magazine ought to be for it and not 
against it, since it would invade no other field; it 
would prosper on no ground but its own. 


68 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


XIV. 


Tue more March thought of the injustice of the 
New York press (which had not, however, attacked 
the literary quality of the number) the more bitterly 
he resented it; and his wife’s indignation super- 
heated his own. very Other Week had become a 
very personal affair with the whole family; the chil- 
dren shared their parents’ disgust; Bella was out- 
spoken in her denunciations of a venal press. Mrs. 
March saw nothing but ruin ahead, and began tacitly 
to plan a retreat to Boston and an establishment re- 
trenched to the basis of two thousand a year. She 
shed some secret tears in anticipation of the priva- 
tions which this must involve; but when Fulkerson 
came to see March rather late the night of the pub- 
lication day, she nobly told him that if the worst 
came to the worst she could only have the kindliest 
feeling toward him, and should not regard him as 
in the slightest degree responsible. 

“Oh, hold on, hold on!” he protested. 
don’t think we’ve made a failure, do you?” 

“Why, of course,” she faltered, while March re- 
mained gloomily silent. 

“Well, I guess we’ll wait for the official count, 
first. Even New York hasn’t gone against us, and 
I guess there’s a majority coming down to Harlem 
River that could sweep everything before it, any- 
way.” 

“What do you mean, Fulkerson?” March de- 
‘manded, sternly. 

“Oh, nothing! Merely that the News Company 
has ordered ten thousand now; and you know we 
had to give them the first twenty on commission.” 

“What do you mean ?” March repeated; his wife 
held her breath. , 

“T mean that the first number is a booming suc- 
cess already, and that it’s going to a hundred thou- 
sand before it stops. That unanimity and variety 
of censure in the morning papers, combined with 
the attractiveness of the thing itself, has cleared 
every stand in the city, and now if the favor of the 
country press doesn’t turn the tide against us, our 
fortune’s made.” The Marches remained dumb. 
“Why, look here! Didn’t I tell you those criticisms 
would be the making of us, when they first began 
to turn you blue this morning, March ?” 

‘‘He came home to lunch perfectly sick,” said 
Mrs. March; “and I wouldn’t let him go back 
again.” 

“Didn’t I tell you so 2” Fulkerson persisted. 

March could not remember that he had, or that 
he had been anything but incoherently and hysteri- 
cally jocose over the papers, but he said, “ Yes, yes 
—I think go.” 

“I knew it from the start,” said Fulkerson. 
“The only other person who took those criticisms 


“You 


in the right spirit was Mother Dryfoos—I’ve just 
been bolstering up the Dryfoos family. She had 
them read to her by Mrs. Mandel, and she under- 
stood them to be all the most flattering prophecies 
of success. Well, I didn’t read between the lines 
to that extent, quite; but I saw that they were go- 
ing to help us, if there was anything in us, more than 
anything that could have been done. And there 
was something in us! I tell you, March, that seven- 
shooting self-cocking donkey of a Beaton has given 
us the greatest start! He’s caught on like a mice. 
He’s made the thing awfully chic; it’s jimmy; 
there’s lots of dog about it. He’s managed that 
process so that the illustrations look as expensive 
as first-class wood-cuts, and they’re cheaper than 
chromos. He’s put style into the whole thing.” 

“ Oh, yes,” said March, with eager meekness, “it’s 
Beaton that’s done it.” 

Fulkerson read jealousy of Beaton in Mrs. 
March’s face. “Beaton has given us the start be- 
cause his work appeals to the eye. There’s no de- 
nying that the pictures have sold this first number; 
but I expect the literature of this first number to 
sell the pictures of the second. I’ve been reading it 
all over, nearly, since I found how the cat was jump- 
ing; I was anxious about it, and I tell you, old man, 
it’s good. Yes,sir! I was afraid maybe you had 
got it oo good, with that Boston refinement of yours; 
but I reckon you haven’t. I’ll risk it. I don’t see 
how you got so much variety into so few things, and 
all of them palpitant, all of °em on the keen jump 
with actuality.” 

The mixture of American slang with the jargon 
of European criticism in Fulkerson’s talk made 
March smile, but his wife did not seem to notice it 
in her exultation. “That is just what I say,” she 
broke in. “It’s perfectly wonderful. I never was 
anxious about it a moment, except, .as you say, Mr. 
Fulkerson, I was afraid it might be too good.” 

They went on in an antiphony of praise till March 
said, ‘‘ Really, I don’t see what’s left me but to 
strike for higher wages. I perceive that I’m indis- 
pensable.”’ 

“Why, old man, you’re coming in on the divvy, 
you know,” said Fulkerson. 

They both laughed, and when Fulkerson was gone, 
Mrs. March asked her husband what a divvy was. 

“‘Tt’s a chicken before it’s hatched.” 

NOL Truly ?” 

He explained, and she began to spend the divvy. 

At Mrs. Leighton’s, Fulkerson gave Alma all the 
honor of the success; he told her mother that the 
girl’s design for the cover had sold every number, 
and Mrs, Leighton believed him. 

“Well, Ah think 4h maght have some of the 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


glory,” Miss Woodburn pouted. “Where am dh 
comin’ in ?” 

‘“‘You’re coming in on the cover of the next num- 
ber,” said Fulkerson. ‘We're going to have your 
face there; Miss Leighton’s going to sketch it in.” 
He said this reckless of the fact that he had already 
shown them the design of the second number, 
which was Beaton’s weird bit of gas-country land- 
scape. ‘, 

“‘ Ah don’t see why you don’t wrahte the fiction 
for your magazine, Mr. Fulkerson,” said the girl. 

This served to remind Fulkerson of something. 
He turned to her father. ‘Tl tell you what, Col- 
onel Woodburn, I want Mr, March to see some chap- 
ters of that book of yours. I’ve been talking to 
him about it.” 

“T do not think it would add to the popularity of 
your periodical, sir,” said the Colonel, with a stately 
pleasure in beingasked. ‘My views of a civilization 
based upon responsible slavery would hardly be ac- 
ceptable to your commercialized society.” 

“Well, not as a practical thing, of course,” Ful- 
kerson admitted. “But as something retrospec- 
tive, speculative, I believe it would make a hit. 
There’s so much going on now about social ques- 
tions ; I guess people would like to read it.” 

“I do not know that my work is intended to 
amuse people,” said the Colonel, with some state. 

“Mah goodness! Ah only wish it was, then,” said 
his daughter; and she added: “ Yes, Mr. Fulkerson, 
the Colonel will be very glad to submit po’tions of 
his woak to yo’ edito’. We want to have some of 
the honaw. Perhaps we can say we helped to stop 
yo’ magazine, if we didn’t help to stawt it.” 

They all laughed at her boldness, and Fulkerson 
said, “It ll take a good deal more than that to stop 
Huery Other Week. The Colonel’s whole book 
couldn’t do it.’ Then he looked unhappy, for Col- 
onel Woodburn did not seem to enjoy his reassuring 
words; but Miss Woodburn came to his rescue. 
“You maght illustrate it with the po’trait of the 
awthor’s daughtaw, if it’s too late for the covah.” 

“Going to have that in every number, Miss Wood- 
burn,”’ he cried. 

“Oh, mah goodness!” she said, with mock hu- 
mility. 

Alma sat looking at her piquant head, black, un- 
consciously outlined against the lamp, as she sat 
working by the table. ‘Just keep still a moment !” 

She got her sketch-block and pencils, and began 
to draw; Fulkerson tilted himself forward and 
looked over her shoulder; he smiled outwardly; 
inwardly he was divided between admiration of 
Miss Woodburn’s arch beauty and appreciation of 
the skill which reproduced it; at the same time he 
was trying to remember whether March had author- 
ized him to go so far as to ask for a sight of 
Colonel Woodburn’s manuscript. He felt that he 
had trenched upon March’s province, and he framed 


69 


one: apology to the editor for bringing him the 
manuscript, and another to the author for bringing 
it back. 

‘“Most Ah hold raght still like it was a photo- 
graph ?” asked Miss Woodburn. ‘Can Ah toak ?” 

“Talk all you want,” said Alma, squinting her 
eyes. ‘And you needn’t be either adamantine, nor 
yet—wooden.” 

“Oh, ho’ very good of you! 
—go on, Mr. Fulkerson !” 

“Me talk? I can’t breathe till this thing is 
done!” sighed Fulkerson; at that point of his men- 
tal drama the Colonel was behaving rustily about 
the return of his manuscript, and he felt that he 
was looking his last on Miss Woodburn’s profile. 

“Ts she getting it raght ?” asked the girl, 

“T don’t know which is which,” said Fulkerson. 

“Oh, Ah hope Ah shall! I don’t want to go 
round feelin’ like a sheet of papah half the time.” 

“You could rattle on, just the same,” suggested 
Alma. | 

“Oh, now! Jost listen to that, Mr. Fulkerson. 
Do you call that any way to toak to people ?” 

“You might know which you were by the color,” 
Fulkerson began, and then he broke off from the 
personal consideration with a business inspiration, 
and smacked himself on the knee: “ We could print 
it in color!” 

Mrs, Leighton gathered up her sewing and held it 
with both hands in her lap, while she came round, 
and looked critically at the sketch and the model 
over her glasses. ‘It’s very good, Alma,” she said. 

Colonel Woodburn remained restively on his side 
of the table. “Of course, Mr. Fulkerson, you were 
jesting, sir, when you spoke of printing a sketch of 
my daughter.” 

“Why, I don’t know— If you object—” 

“T do, sir—decidedly,” said the Colonel. 

“Then that settles it, of course,” said Fulkerson. 
“T only meant—” 

“Indeed it doesn’t!” cried the girl. ‘‘ Who's to 
know who it’s from? Ah’m jost set on havin’ it 
printed! Ah’m going to appear as the head of 
Slavery—in opposition to the head of Liberty.” 

“There ’1l be a revolution inside of forty-eight 
hours, and we'll have the Colonel’s system going 
wherever a copy of Hvery Other Week circulates,” 
said Fulkerson. 

“This sketch belongs to me,” Alma interposed. 
“Tm not going to let it be printed.” 

“ Oh, mah goodness !” said Miss Woodburn, laugh- 
ing good-humoredly. “That’s becose you were 
brought up to hate slavery.” 

‘‘T should like Mr. Beaton to see it,” said Mrs. 
Leighton, in a sort of absent tone. She added, to 
Fulkerson: “I rather expected he might be in, to- 
night.” 

“Well, if he comes, we’ll leave it to Beaton,” Ful- 
kerson said, with relief in the solution, and an anx- 


Well, if Ah can toak 


70 


ious glance at the Colonel, across the table, to see 
how he took that form of the joke. Miss Wood- 
burn intercepted his glance and laughed, and Ful- 
kerson laughed too, but rather forlornly. 

Alma set her lips primly and turned her head 
first on one side and then on the other to look at 
the sketch. “I don’t think we'll leave it to Mr. 
Beaton, even if he comes.” 

“We left the other design for the cover to Bea- 
ton,” Fulkerson insinuated. ‘TI guess you needn’t 
be afraid of him.” 

“Ts it a question of my being afraid ?” Alma 
asked; she seemed coolly intent on her draw- 
ing. 

‘i Miss Leighton thinks he ought to be afraid of 
her,” Miss Woodburn explained. 


XV. 


In the silence that followed, Fulkerson looked 
from one lady to the other with dismay. ‘I seem to 
have put my foot in it, somehow,” he suggested, and 
Miss Woodburn gave a cry of laughter. 

‘Poo’ Mr. Fulkerson! Poo’ Mr. Fulkerson! Papa 
thoat you wanted him to go.” 

“Wanted him to go?” repeated Fulkerson. 

“We always mention Mr. Beaton when we want to 
get rid of papa.” 

“Well, it seems to me that I have noticed that he 
didn’t take much interest in Beaton, as a general 
topic. But I don’t know that I ever saw it drive 
him out of the room before.” 

“Well, he isn’t always so bad,” said Miss Wood- 
burn. “But it was a case of hate at first sight, 
and it seems to be growin’ on papa.” 

“Well, I can understand that,” said Fulkerson. 
“The impulse to destroy Beaton is something that 
everybody has to struggle against, at the start.” 

“T must say, Mr. Fulkerson,” said Mrs. Leighton 
in the tremor through which she nerved herself to 
differ openly with any one she liked, “I never had 
to struggle with anything of the kind, in regard to 
Mr. Beaton. He has always been most respectful 
and—and considerate, with me, whatever he has 
been with others.” 

“Well, of course, Mrs. Leighton !” Fulkerson came 
back in a soothing tone. ‘“ But you see you’re the 
rule that proves the exception. I was speaking of 
the way men felt about Beaton. It’s different with 
ladies; I just said so.” 

“Is it always different ?”” Alma asked, lifting her 
head and her hand from her drawing, and staring 
at it absently. 

Fulkerson pushed his hands both through his 
whiskers. ‘Look here! Look here!” he said. 
‘““Won’t somebody start some other subject? We 
haven’t had the weather up, yet, have we? Or the 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“It’s a question of Azs courage, then ?” said Alma. 
“Well, I don’t think there are many young ladies 
that Beaton’s afraid of, said Fulkerson, giving 
himself the respite of this purely random remark, 


while he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and 


Colonel Woodburn for some light upon the tendency 
of their daughters’ words, 

He was not helped by Mrs. Leighton’s saying, with 
a certain anxiety, “I don’t know what you mean, 
Mr. Fulkerson.” 

“Well, you’re as much in the dark as I am my- 
self, then,” said Fulkerson. “I suppose I meant 
that Beaton is rather—a—favorite, you know. The 
women like him.” 

Mrs. Leighton sighed, and Colonel Woodburn rose 
and left the room. 


opera? What is the matter with a few remarks 
about politics ?” 

“Why, I thoat you lahked to toak about the staff 
of yo’ magazine,” said Miss Woodburn. 

“Oh, I do!” said Fulkerson. “But not always 
about the same member of it. He gets monotonous, 
when he doesn’t get complicated. I’ve just come 
round from the Marches’,” he added, to Mrs. Leigh- 
ton. 

“T suppose they’ve got thoroughly settled in 
their apartment by this time.” Mrs. Leighton said 
something like this whenever the Marches were 
mentioned. At the bottom of her heart she had not 
forgiven them for not taking her rooms; she had 
liked their looks so much; and she was always 
hoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied ; 
she could not help wanting them punished a little. 

“Well, yes; as much as they ever will be,” Ful- 
kerson answered. “The Boston style is pretty dif- 
ferent, you know; and the Marches are old-fashion- 
ed folks, and I reckon they never went in much for 
bric-d-brac. They’ve put away nine or ten barrels 
of dragon candlesticks, but they keep finding new 
ones.”’ 

“Their landlady has just joined our class,” said 
Alma. “Isn’t her name Green? She happened 
to see my copy of Every Other Week, and said she 
knew the editor; and told me.” 

“Well, it’s a little world,” said Fulkerson. “You 
seem to be touching elbows with everybody. Just 
think of your having had our head translator for a 
model.” 

“Ah think that your whole publication revolves 
around the Leighton family,” said Miss Woodburn, 

“That’s pretty much so,” Fulkerson admitted. 
‘‘ Anyhow, the publisher seems disposed to do so.” 

“Are you the publisher? I thought it was Mr. 
Dryfoos,” said Alma. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Tt is.” 

(<5 Oh We? 

The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a dis- 
comfort which he promptly confessed. ‘‘ Missed 
again.” 

The girls laughed, and he regained something of 
his lost spirits, and smiled upon their gayety, which 
lasted beyond any apparent reason for it. 

Miss Woodburn asked, ‘‘ And is Mr. Dryfoos senio’ 
anything like owah Mr. Dryfoos ?” 

“Not the least.” 

* But he’s jost as exemplary ?”’ 

“Yes; in his way.” 

“Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of 
puffection togethah, once.” 

“Why, look here! I’ve been thinking Id cele- 
brate a little, when the old gentleman gets back. 
Have a little supper—something of that kind. How 
would you like to let me have your parlors for it, 
Mrs. Leighton? You ladies could stand on the 
stairs, and have a peep at us, in the bunch.” 

“Oh, mah! What a privilege! And will Miss 
Alma be there, with the othah contributors? Ah 
shall jost expah of envy!” 

“She won’t be there in person,” said Fulkerson, 
“but she'll be represented by the head of the art 
department.” 

“Mah goodness! And who'll the head of the 
publishing department represent ?” 

“‘ He can represent you,” said Alma. 

“Well, Ah want to be represented, someho’.”’ 

“We'll have the banquet the night before you 
appear on the cover of our fourth number,” said 
Fulkerson. 

“ Ah thoat that was doubly fo’bidden,” said Miss 
Woodburn. “By the stern parent and the envious 
awtust.” 

“We'll get Beaton to get round them, somehow. 
I guess we can trust him to manage that.” 

Mrs. Leighton sighed her resentment of the impli- 
eation. 

“T always feel that Mr, Beaton doesn’t do himself 
justice,” she began. 

Fulkerson could not forego the chance of a joke. 
“Well, maybe he would rather temper justice with 
mercy in a case like his.” This made both the 
younger ladies laugh. “I judge this is my chance 
to get off with my life,” he added, and he rose as 
he spoke. “Mrs. Leighton, I am about the only 
man of my sex who doesn’t thirst for Beaton’s blood 
most of the time. But I know him, and I don’t. 
He’s more kinds of a good fellow than people gen- 
erally understand, He don’t wear his heart upon 
his sleeve—not his ulster sleeve, anyway. You can 
always count me on your side when it’s a question 
of finding Beaton not guilty if he'll leave the 
State.” 

Alma set her drawing against the wall, in rising 
4o say good-night to Fulkerson. He bent over on 


71 


his stick to look at it. ‘ Well, it’s beautiful,” he 
sighed, with unconscious sincerity. 

Alma made him a courtesy of mock modesty. 
“Thanks to Miss Woodburn.” 

‘‘Oh,no! All she had to do was simply to stay 
put.” 

“Don’t you think Ah might have improved it if 
Ah had looked better?” the girl asked, gravely. 

“Oh, you couldn’t/” said Fulkerson, and he went 
off triumphant in their applause and their cries of 


“Which? which 2?” 


Mrs. Leighton sank deep into an accusing gloom 
when at last she found herself alone with her daugh- 
ter. “I don’t know what you are thinking about, 
Alma Leighton. If you don’t like Mr. Beaton—” 

“*T don’t.” 

“You don’t? You know better than that. 
know that you did care for him.” 

“Oh! That's a very different thing. That’s a 
thing that can be got over.” 

‘Got over!” repeated Mrs. Leighton, aghast. 

“Of course, it can! Don’t be romantic, mamma. 
People get over dozens of such fancies. They even 
marry for love two or three times.” 

‘Never !” cried her mother, doing her best to feel 
shocked, and at last looking it. 

Her looking it had no effect upon Alma. ‘You 
can easily get over caring for people; but you can’t 
get over liking them—if you like them because they 
are sweet and good. That’s what lasts. I was asim- 
ple goose, and he imposed upon me because he was 
a sophisticated goose. Now the case is reversed.” 

“He does care for you, now. You can see it. 
Why do you encourage him to come here ?” 

“T don’t,” said Alma, “TI will tell him to keep 
away if you like. But whether he comes or goes, 
it will be the same.” 

“Not to him, Alma! He is in love with you!” 

‘“‘He has never said so.” 

“And you would really let him say so, when you 
intend to refuse him ?” 

“T can’t very well refuse him till he does say so.” 

This was undeniable. Mrs. Leighton could only 
demand in an awful tone, “ May I ask why—if you 
cared for him; and I know you care for him still— 
you will refuse him ?” 

Alma laughed. ‘‘ Because—because I’m wedded 
to my Art, and I’m not going to commit bigamy, 
whatever I do.” 

“ Alma!” 

“Well, then, because I don’t like him—that is, I 
don’t believe in him, and don’t trust him. He’s 
fascinating, but he’s false and he’s fickle. He can’t 
help it, I dare say.” 

‘** And you are perfectly hard. Is it possible that 
you were actually pleased to have Mr. Fulkerson 
tease you about Mr. Dryfoos ?” 

“ Oh, good-night, now, mamma! 
ing personal,” 


You 


This is becom- 


79 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Part Third. 


I. 


Tue scheme of a banquet to celebrate the initial 
success of Hvery Other Week expanded in Fulker- 
son’s fancy into a series. Instead of the publish- 
ing and editorial force with certain of the more 
representative artists and authors sitting down to 
a modest supper in Mrs. Leighton’s parlors, he con- 
ceived of a dinner at Delmonico’s, with the princi- 
pal literary and artistic people throughout the coun- 
try as guests, and an inexhaustible hospitality to re- 
porters and correspondents, from whom paragraphs, 
prophetic and historic, would flow weeks before and 
after the first of the series. He said the thing was 
a new departure in magazines ; it amounted to some- 
thing in literature as radical as the American Revo- 
lution in politics: it was the idea of self-govern- 
ment in .the arts; and it was this idea that had 
never yet been fully developed in regard to it. That 
was what must be done in the speeches at the din- 
ner, and the speeches must be reported. Then it 
would go like wildfire. He asked March whether 
he thought Mr. Depew could be got to come; Mark 
Twain, he was sure would come; he was a literary 
man. They ought to invite Mr. Evarts, and the Car- 
dinal, and the leading Protestant divines. His am- 
bition stopped at nothing, nothing but the question 
of expense; there he had to wait the return of the 
elder Dryfoos from the West, and Dryfoos was still 
delayed at Moffitt, and Fulkerson openly confessed 
that he was afraid he would stay there till his own 
enthusiasm escaped in other activities, other plans. 

Fulkerson was as little likely as possible to fall 
under a superstitious subjection to another man; 
but March could not help seeing that in this pos- 
sible measure Dryfoos was Fulkerson’s fetich. He 
did not revere him, March decided, because it was 
not in Fulkerson’s nature to revere anything; he 
could like and dislike, but he could not respect. 
Apparently, however, Dryfoos daunted him some- 
how; and besides the homage which those who 
have not pay to those who have, Fulkerson render- 
ed Dryfoos the tribute of a feeling which March 
could only define as a sort of bewilderment. As 
well as March could make out, this feeling was 
evoked by the spectacle of Dryfoos’s unfailing luck, 
which Fulkerson was fond of dazzling himself with. 
It perfectly consisted with a keen sense of what- 
ever was sordid and selfish in a man on whom his 
career must have had its inevitable effect. He liked 
to philosophize the case with March, to recall Dry- 
foos as he was when he first met him, still some- 
what in the sap, at Moffitt, and to study the pro- 
cesses by which he imagined him to have dried into 
the hardenéd speculator, without even the pretence 
to any advantage but his own in his ventures. He 
was aware of painting the character too vividly, and 


he warned March not to accept it exactly in those- 


tints, but to subdue them and shade it for himself, 
He said that where his advantage was not concern- 
ed, there was ever so much good in Dryfoos, and. 
that if in some things he had grown inflexible, he 


had expanded in others to the full measure of the. 


vast scale on which he did business. It had seem- 
ed a little odd to March that a man should put 
money into such an enterprise as Every Other Week 
and go off about other affairs, not only without any 
sign of anxiety but without any sort of interest. 
But Fulkerson said that was the splendid side of 
Dryfoos. He had a courage, a magnanimity, that 
was equal to the strain of any such uncertainty. 
He had faced the music once for all, when he 
asked Fulkerson what the thing would cost in the 
different degrees of potential failure; and then he 
had gone off, leaving everything to Fulkerson and 
the younger Dryfoos, with the instruction simply 
to go ahead and not bother him about it. Fulker- 
son called that pretty tall for an old fellow who 
used to bewail the want of pigs and chickens to 
occupy his mind. He alleged it as another proof 
of the versatility of the American mind, and of the 
grandeur of institutions and opportunities that let 
every man grow to his full size, so that any man 
in America could run the concern if necessary. He 
believed that old Dryfoos could step into Bismarck’s 
shoes, and run the German Empire at ten days’ 
notice, or about as long as it would take him to 20: 
from New York to Berlin. But Bismarck would 
not know anything about Dryfoos’s plans till Dry- 
foos got ready to show his hand. Fulkerson him- 
self did not pretend to say what the old man had 
been up to, since he went West. He was at Moffitt. 
first, and then he was at Chicago, and then he had 
gone out to Denver to look after some mines he 
had out there, and a railroad or two; and now he 
was at Moffitt again. He was supposed to be clos- 
ing up his affairs there, but nobody could say. 

Fulkerson told March the morning after Dryfoos. 
returned that he had not only not pulled out at 
Moffitt, but had gone in deeper, ten times deeper 
than ever. He was in a royal good-humor, Ful-. 
kerson reported, and was going to drop into the 
office on his way up from the street (March un- 
derstood this to mean Wall Street) that afternoon. 
He was tickled to death with Hvery Other Week so. 
far as it had gone, and was anxious to pay his re- 
spects to the editor. 

March accounted for some rhetoric in this, but 
let it flatter him, and prepared himself for a meet- 
ing about which he could see that Fulkerson was. 
only less nervous than he had shown himself about 
the public reception of the first number. It gave 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


March a disagreeable feeling of being owned and 
of being about to be inspected by his proprietor ; 
but he fell back upon such independence as he 
could find in the thought of those two thousand 
dollars of income beyond the caprice of his owner, 
and maintained an outward serenity. 

He was a little ashamed afterward of the reso- 
lution it had cost him to do so. It was not a ques- 
tion of Dryfoos’s physical presence: that was rather 
effective than otherwise, and carried a suggestion 
of moneyed indifference to convention in the gray 
business suit of provincial cut, and the low, wide- 
brimmed hat of flexible black felt. He had a stick 
with an old-fashioned top of buckhorn worn smooth 
and bright by the palm of his hand, which had not 
lost its character in fat, and which had a history 
of former work in its enlarged knuckles, though it 
was now as soft as March’s, and must once have 
been small even for a man of Mr. Dryfoos’s stature: 
he was below the average size. But what struck 
March was the fact that Dryfoos seemed furtively 
conscious of being a country person, and of being 
aware that.in their meeting he was to be tried by 
other tests than those which would have availed him 
as a shrewd speculator. He evidently had some 
curiosity about March, as the first of his kind whom 
he had encountered: some such curiosity as the 
country school trustee feels and tries to hide in the 
presence of the new school-master. But the whole 
affair was of course on a higher plane; on one side 
Dryfoos was much more a man of the world than 
March was, and he probably divined this at once, 
and rested himself upon the fact ina measure. It 
seemed to be his preference that his son should 
introduce them, for he came upstairs with Conrad, 
and they had fairly made acquaintance before Ful- 
kerson joined them. 

Conrad offered to leave them at once, but his 
father made him stay. ‘“I reckon Mr. March and 
I haven’t got anything so private to talk about that 
we want to keep it from the other partners. Well, 
Mr. March, are you getting used to New York yet?” 

“Oh, yes, But not so much time as most places. 
Everybody belongs more or less in New York; no- 
body has to belong here altogether.” 

“Yes, that is so. You can try it, and go away 
if you don’t like it a good deal easier than you 
could from a smaller place. Wouldn’t make so 
much talk, would it?” He glanced at March with 
a jocose light in his shrewd eyes. “That is the way 
I feel about it all the time: just visiting. Now, it 
wouldn’t be that way in Boston, I reckon ?” 

“ You couldn’t keep on visiting there your whole 
life,” said March. 

Dryfoos laughed, showing his lower teeth in a 
way that was at once simple and fierce. “ Mr, Ful- 
kerson didn’t hardly know as he could get you to 
leave. I suppose you got used to it there. I never 


been in your city.” 


73- 


“T had got used to it; but it was hardly my city, 
except by marriage. My wife’s a Bostonian.” 

“‘She’s been a little homesick here, then,” said 
Dryfoos, with a smile of the same quality as his 
laugh, 

‘“‘ Less than I expected,” said March. ‘Of course 
she was very much attached to our old home.” 

“‘T guess my wife won’t ever get used to New 
York,” said Dryfoos, and he drew in his lower lip 
with a sharp sigh, “But my girls like it; they’re: 
young. You never been out our way, yet, Mr. March ? 
Out West ?” 

“Well, only for the purpose of being born, and 
brought up. I used to live in Crawfordsville, and 
then Indianapolis.” 

“Indianapolis is bound to be a great place,” said 
Dryfoos. ‘I remember now, Mr. Fulkerson told me 
you was from our State.” He went on to brag of 
the West, as if March were an Easterner and had 
to be convinced. ‘ You ought to see all that coun- 
try. It’s a great country.” 

“‘Oh, yes,” said March, “I understand that.” He 
expected the praise of the great West to lead up to. 
some comment on Hvery Other Week ; and there was. 
abundant suggestion of that topic in the manu- 
scripts, proofs of letter-press and illustrations, with 
advance copies of the latest number strewn over 
his table. 

But Dryfoos apparently kept himself from look- 
ing at these things. He rolled his head about on 
his shoulders to take in the character of the room, 
and said to his son, “ You didn’t change the wood-. 
work, after all.” 

‘““No; the architect thought we had better let it. 
be, unless we meant to change the whole place. He 
liked its being old-fashioned.” 

‘“‘T hope you feel comfortable here, Mr. March,” 
the old man said, bringing his eyes to bear upon 
him again after their tour of inspection. 

‘“Too comfortable for a working-man,” said March, 
and he thought that this remark must bring them 
to some talk about his work, but the proprietor 
only smiled again. 

‘“‘T guess I sha’n’t lose much on this house,” he- 
returned, as if musing aloud. ‘This down-town 
property is coming up. Business is getting in on 
all these side streets. I thought I paid a pretty 
good price for it, too.” He went on to talk of real 
estate, and March began to feel a certain resent- 
ment at his continued avoidance of the only topic 
in which they could really have a common interest. 
“You live down this way somewhere, don’t you 2” 
the old man concluded. 

“Yes. Iwished to be near my work.” March was 
vexed with himself for having recurred to it; but 
afterward he was not sure but Dryfoos shared his. 
own diffidence in the matter, and was waiting for 
him to bring it openly into the talk. At times he- 
seemed wary and masterful, and then March felt. 


V4 


that he was being examined and tested; at others 
so simple that March might well have fancied that 
he needed encouragement, and desiredit. He talked 
of his wife and daughters in a way that invited 
March to say friendly things of his family, which 
appeared to give the old man first an undue plea- 
sure, and then a final distrust. At moments he 
turned, with an effect of finding relief in it, to his 
son and spoke to him across March of matters which 
he was unacquainted with: he did not seem aware 
that this was rude, but the young man must have 
felt it so; he always brought the conversation back, 
and once at some cost to himself when his father 
made it personal. 

“T want to make a regular New York business 
man out of that fellow,” he said to March, pointing 
at Conrad with his stick. “You s’pose I’m ever 
going to do it ?” 

‘Well, I don’t know,” said March, trying to fall 
in with the joke. ‘Do you mean nothing but a 
business man ?” 

The old man laughed at whatever latent meaning 
he fancied in this, and said, ‘‘You think he would 
be a little too much for me there? Well, I’ve seen 
enough of ’em to know it don’t always take a large 
pattern of a man to do a large business. But I 
want him to get the business training, and then if 
he wants to go into something else, he knows what 
the world is, anyway. Heigh?” 

“Oh, yes!” March assented, with some compas- 
sion for the young man reddening patiently under 
his father’s comment. 

Dryfoos went on as if his son were not in hearing. 
“Now that boy wanted to be a preacher. What 
‘does a preacher know about the world he preaches 


II. 


A sILeNce followed, of rather painful length. 
It was broken by the. cheery voice of Fulkerson, 
sent before him to herald Fulkerson’s cheery person. 
“Well, I suppose you’ve got the glorious success 
of Every Other Week down pretty cold in your talk 
by this time. I should have been up sooner to 
join you, but I was nipping a man for the last page 
of the cover. I guess we'll have to let the Muse 
have that for an advertisement instead of a poem 
the next time, March. Well, the old gentleman 
given you boys your scolding?” The person of 
Fulkerson had got into the room long before he 
reached this question, and had planted itself astride 
a chair. Fulkerson looked over the chair back, 
now at March, and now at the elder Dryfoos as he 
spoke. 

March answered him. “I guess we must have 
been waiting for you, Fulkerson. At any rate we 
hadn’t got to the scolding yet.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


against, when he’s been brought up a preacher ? 
He don’t know so much as a bad little boy in his 
Sunday-school; he knows about as much as a girl. 
I always told him, You be a man first, and then 
you be a preacher, if you want to. Heigh ?” 

“Precisely.” March began to feel some com- 
passion for himself in being witness of the young 
fellow’s discomfort under his father’s homily. 

“When we first come to New York, I told him, 
Now here’s your chance to see the world on a big 
scale. You know already what work and saving 
and steady habits and sense will bring a man to; 
you don’t want to go round among the rich; you 
want to go among the poor, and see what laziness, 
and drink, and dishonesty, and foolishness will bring 
men to. And I guess he knows, about as well as 
anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he’ll 
know what he’s preaching about.” The old man 
smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his sharp eyes 
March fancied contempt of the ambition he had 
balked in his son. The present scene must have 
been one of many between them, ending in meek 
submission on the part of the young man whom his 
father perhaps without realizing his cruelty treated 
as a child. March took it hard that he should be 
made to suffer in the presence of a co-ordinate 
power like himself, and began to dislike the old man 
out of proportion to his offence, which might have 
been mere want of taste, or an effect of mere em- 
barrassment before him, But evidently, whatever 
rebellion his daughters had carried through against 
him, he had kept his dominion over this gentle spirit 
unbroken. March did not choose to make any re- 
sponse, but let him continue, if he would, entirely 
upon his own impulse. 


“Why, I didn’t suppose Mr. Dryfoos could ’a? 
held in so long. I understood he was awful mad 
at the way the thing started off, and wanted to give 
you a piece of his mind, when he got at you. I 
inferred as much from a remark that he made.” 
March and Dryfoos looked foolish, as men do when 
made the subject of this sort of merry misrepre- 
sentation. 

“T reckon my scolding will keep awhile yet,” said 
the old man, dryly. 

“Well, then, I guess it’s a good chance to give 
Mr. Dryfoos an idea of what we’ve really done— 
just while we’re resting, as Artemus Ward says. 
Heigh, March ?” 

“T will let you blow the trumpet, Fulkerson. I 
think it belongs strictly to the advertising depart- 
ment,” said March. He now distinctly resented the 
old man’s failure to say anything to him of the 
magazine; he made his inference that it was from 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


@ suspicion of his readiness to presume upon a 
recognition of his share in the success, and he was 
determined to second no sort of appeal for it. 

“The advertising department is the heart and 
soul of every business,” said Fulkerson hardily, 
‘and I like to keep my hand in with a little prac- 
tice on the trumpet in private. I don’t believe Mr. 
Dryfoos has got any idea of the extent of this 
thing. He’s been out among those Rackensackens, 
where we were all born, and he’s read the notices in 
their seven by nine dailies, and he’s seen the thing 
selling on the cars, and he thinks he appreciates 
what’s been done. But I should just like to take 
him round in this little old metropolis awhile, and 
show him Every Other Week on the centre tables 
of the millionaires—the Vanderbilts and the Astors 
—and in the homes of culture and _ refinement 
everywhere, and let him judge for himself. It’s the 
talk of the clubs and the dinner tables; children cry 
for it; it’s the Castoria of literature, and the Pearl- 
ine of art, the Won’t-be-happy-till-he-gets-it of every 
enlightened man, woman, and child in this vast city. 
I knew we could capture the country; but my good- 
ness! I didn’t expect to have New York fall into 
our hands at a blow. But that’s just exactly what 
New York has done. very Other Week supplies 
the long-felt want that’s been grinding round in 
New York and keeping it awake nights ever since 
the war. It’s the culmination of all the high and 
ennobling ideals of the past—”’ 

“How much,” asked Dryfoos, ‘do you expect to 
get out of it the first year, if it keeps the start it’s 
got?” 

“Comes right down to business, every time!” 
said Fulkerson, referring the characteristic to March 
with a delighted glance. ‘“‘ Well, sir, if everything 
works right, and we get rain enough to fill up the 
springs, and it isn’t a grasshopper year, I expect to 
‘clear above all expenses something in the neigh- 
borhood of twenty-five thousand dollars.” 

“Humph! And you are all going to work a 
year — editor, manager, publisher, artists, writers, 
printers, and the rest of ’em—to clear twenty-five 
thousand dollars? JI made that much in half a 
day in Moffitt once. I see it made in half a minute 
in Wall Street, sometimes.” The old man present- 
ed this aspect of the case with a good-natured con- 
tempt, which included Fulkerson and his enthusi- 
asm in an obvious liking. 

His son suggested, “But when we make that 
money here, no one loses it.” 

“Can you prove that?” His father turned sharp- 
ly upon him. “ Whatever is won is lost. It’s all 
a game; it don’t make any difference what you bet 
on. Business is business, and a business man takes 
his risks with his eyes open.” 

“ Ah, but the glory!” Fulkerson insinuated with 
impudent persiflage. “I hadn’t got to the glory yet, 
* because it’s hard to estimate it; but put the glory 


75 


at the lowest figure, Mr. Dryfoos, and add it to the 
twenty-five thousand, and you’ve got an annual in- 
come from Hvery Other Week of dollars enough to 
construct a silver railroad, double track, from this 
office to the moon. I don’t mention any of the sis- 
ter planets because I like to keep within bounds.” 

Dryfoos showed his lower teeth for pleasure in 
Fulkerson’s fooling, and said, ‘“That’s what I like 
about you, Mr. Fulkerson: you always keep within 
bounds.” 

“Well, I aen’t a shrinking Boston violet, like 
March, here. More sunflower in my style of dif- 
fidence; but I am modest, I don’t deny it,” said 
Fulkerson. “And I do hate to have a thing over- 
stated.” 

“And the glory —you do really think there’s 
something in the glory that pays ?” 

“Not a doubt of it! I shouldn’t care for the 
paltry return in money,” said Fulkerson, with a bur- 
lesque of generous disdain, “if it wasn’t for the 
glory along with it.” 

‘“‘And how should you feel about the glory, if 
there was no money along with it?” 

“Well, sir, ’m happy to say we haven’t come to 
that, yet.” 

“‘ Now, Conrad, here,” said the old man, with a 
sort of pathetic rancor, ‘“would rather have the 
glory alone. I believe he don’t even care much for 
your kind of glory, either, Mr. Fulkerson.” 

Fulkerson ran his little eyes curiously over Con- 
rad’s face and then March’s, as if searching for a 
trace there of something gone before which would 
enable him to reach Dryfoos’s whole meaning. He 
apparently resolved to launch himself upon conjec- 
ture. ‘Oh, well, we know how Conrad feels about 
the things of this world, anyway. I should like to 
take ’em on the plane of another sphere, too, some- 
times ; but I noticed a good while ago that this was 
the world I was born into, and so I made up my 
mind that I would do pretty much what I saw the 
rest of the folks doing here below. And I can’t 
see but what Conrad runs the thing on business 
principles in his department, and I guess you'll find 
it so, if you’ll look into it. I consider that we’re 
a whole team and big dog under the wagon with 
you to draw on for supplies, and March, here, at 
the head of the literary business, and Conrad in 
the counting-room, and me to do the heavy lying 
in the advertising part. Oh, and Beaton, of course, 
in the art. I ’most forgot Beaton—Hamlet with 
Hamlet left out.” 

Dryfoos looked across at his son. ‘ Wasn’t that 
the fellow’s name that was there last night ?” 

“Yes,” said Conrad. 

The old man rose. ‘‘ Well, I reckon I got to be 
going. You ready to go uptown, Conrad ?” 

“Well, not quite yet, father.” 

The old man shook hands with March, and went 
down-stairs, followed by his son. 


76 * A Hazard of 

Fulkerson remained. ros 

“He didn’t jump at the chance you gave him to 

a compliment us all round, Fulkerson,” said March, 
with a smile not wholly of pleasure. 
_ Fulkerson asked with as little joy, in the grin he 
had on, “ Didn’t he say anything to you before I 
came in?” 

“Not a word.” 

“Dogged if J know what to make of it,” sighed 
Fulkerson, “ but I guess he’s been having a talk with 
Conrad that’s soured on him. I reckon maybe he 
came back expecting to find that boy reconciled 
to the glory of this world, and Conrad’s showed 
himself just as set against it as ever.” 

“It might have been that,” March admitted, pen- 
sively. “T fancied something of the kind myself 
from words the old man let drop.” 

Fulkerson made him explain, and then he said, 
“That’s it, then; and it’s all right. Conrad ’llcome 
round in time; and all we’ve got to do is to have 
patience with the old man till he does. I know 
he likes you.” Fulkerson affirmed this only inter- 
rogatively, and looked so anxiously to March for 
corroboration that March laughed. 

“He dissembled his love,” he said ; but afterward 
in describing to his wife his interview with Mr. Dry- 
foos he was less amused with this fact. 

When she saw that he was a little cast down by 
it, she began to encourage him. “ He’s just a com- 
mon, ignorant man, and probably didn’t know how 
to express himself. You may be perfectly sure that 
he’s delighted with the success of the magazine, and 
that he understands as well as you do that he owes 
it all to you.” 

“Ah, ’'m not so sure. I don’t believe a man’s 
any better for having made money so easily and 
rapidly as Dryfoos has done, and I doubt if he’s any 
wiser. I don’t know just the point he’s reached in 
his evolution from grub to beetle, but I do know 
that so far as it’s gone the process must have in- 
volved a bewildering change of ideals and criteri- 
ons. I guess he’s come to despise a great many 
things that he once respected, and that intellectual 
ability is among them—what we call intellectual 
ability. He must have undergone a moral deterio- 
ration, an atrophy of the generous instincts, and I 
don’t see why it shouldn’t have reached his mental 
make-up. He has sharpened, but he has narrowed ; 
his sagacity has turned into Suspicion, his caution 
to meanness, his courage to ferocity. That’s the 
way I philosophize a man of Dryfoos’s experience, 
and I am not very.proud when I realize that such 
a man and his experience are the ideal and ambi- 
tion of most Americans. I rather think they came 
pretty near being mine, once.” 

“No, dear, they never did,” his wife protested. 

“Well, they’re not likely to be, in the future, 


New Fortunes. 


The Dryfoos feature of Every Other Week is thorough- 
ly distasteful to me.” 

“Why, but he hasn’t really got anything to do 
with it, has he, beyond furnishing the money ?” 

“That’s the impression that Fulkerson has al-. 
lowed us to get. But the man that holds the purse 
holds the reins. He may let us guide the horse,, 
but when he likes he can drive. If we don’t like 
his driving, then we can get down.” 

Mrs. March was less interested in this figure 
of speech than in the personal aspects involved: 
“Then you think Mr. Fulkerson has deceived you?” 

“Oh no!” said her husband, laughing. “But I 
think he has deceived himself, perhaps.” 

‘How ?” she pursued. 

“He may have thought he was using Dryfoos, 
when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have sup- 
posed he was not afraid of him when he was very 
much so. His courage hadn’t been put to the test, 
and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on 
the fiddle, you know: you can’t tell whether you’ve 
got it till you try.” 

“Nonsense! Do you mean that he would ever 
sacrifice you to Mr. Dryfoos ?” 

“T hope he may not be tempted. But I’d rather 
be taking the chances with Fulkerson alone, than 
with Fulkerson and Dryfoos to back him, Dryfoos 
seems somehow to take the poetry and the pleasure 
out of the thing.” 

Mrs. March was a long time silent, Then she 
began, “‘ Well, my dear, J never wanted to come to 
New York—” 

“Neither did I,’ March promptly put in. 

“But now that we’re here,” she went on, “I’m 
not going to have you letting every little thing dis- 
courage you. I don’t see what there was in Mr. 
Dryfoos’s manner to give you any anxiety. He’s 
just a common, stupid, inarticulate country person,. 
and he didn’t know how to express himself, as I 
said in the beginning, and that’s the reason he didn’t 
Say anything.” 

“Well, I don’t deny you’re right about it.” 

“Tt’s dreadful,” his wife continued, “to be mixed 
up with such a man and his family, but I don’t be- 
lieve he’ll ever meddle with your management, and 
till he does, all you need do is to have as little to do. 
with him as possible, and go quietly on yourown way.” 

“Oh, I shall go on quietly enough,” said March. 
“T hope I sha’n’t begin going stealthily.” 

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. March, “just let me 
know when you’re tempted to do that. If ever 
you sacrifice the smallest grain of your honesty or 
your self-respect to Mr. Dryfoos, or anybody else, I 
will simply renounce you.” 

“In view of that I’m rather glad the management 
of Hvery Other Week involves tastes and not con- 
victions,” said March. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. * 


Til. 


Tat night Dryfoos was wakened from his after- 
dinner nap by the sound of gay talk and nervous 
giggling in the drawing-room. The talk, which was 
‘Christine’s, and the giggling, which was Mela’s, were 
intershot with the heavier tones of a man’s voice; 
-and Dryfoos lay awhile on the leathern lounge in 
his library, trying to make out whether he knew 
‘the voice. His wife sat in a deep chair before the 
fire, with her eyes on his face, waiting for him to 
wake. 

“Who is that, out there?” he asked, without 
opening his eyes. 

“‘Indeed, indeed I don’t know, Jacob,” his wife 


answered. ‘I reckon it’s just some visitor of the 
girls.” 

“Was I snoring ?” 

“Not a bit. You was sleeping as quiet! I did 


hate to have ’em wake you, and I was just goin’ 
‘out to shoothem. They’ve been playin’ something, 
-and that made them laugh.” 

“TY didn’t know but I had snored,”’ said the old 
man, sitting up. 

‘““No,” said his wife. Then she asked, wistfully, 
“* Was you out at the old place, Jacob?” 

“ ese, 

“Did it look natural ?” 

“Yes; mostly. They’re sinking the wells down 
‘in the woods pasture.” 

“ And—the childern’s graves ?” 


“They haven’t touched that part. But I reckon 


we got to have’em moved tothe cemetery. I bought 
a lot.” 
The old woman began softly to weep. ‘‘It does 


seem too hard that they can’t be let to rest in peace, 
pore little things. I wanted you and me to lay 
there too, when our time come, Jacob. Just there, 
back o’ the beehives, and under them shoomakes— 
my, I can see the very place! And I don’t believe 
Tll ever feel at home anywheres else. I woon’t 
know where I am when the trumpet sounds, Ihave 
to think before I can tell where the east is in New 
York; and what if I should git faced the wrong 
way when I raise? Jacob, I wonder you could sell 
it!’ Her head shook, and the fire-light shone on 
her tears, as she searched the folds of her dress for 
her pocket. 

A peal of laughter came from the drawing-room, 
and then the sound of chords struck on the piano. 

“Hush! Don’t you cry, Lizbeth!” said Dry- 
foos. ‘Here; take my handkerchief. Ive got a 
nice lot in the cemetery, and I’m goin’ to have a 
monument, with two lambs on it—like the one you 
always liked so much. It ain’t the fashion, any 
more, to have family buryin’-grounds; they’re col- 
lectin’ ’em into the cemeteries, all round.” 


“T reckon I got to bear it,” said his wife, muf- 
fling her face in his handkerchief. ‘And I suppose 
the Lord kin find me, wherever am. But I always 
did want to lay just there. You mind how we used 
to go out and set there, after milkin’, and watch the 
sun go down, and talk about where their angels was, 
and try to figger it out?” 

“‘T remember, ’Liz’beth.” 

The man’s voice in the drawing-room sang a 
snatch of French song, insolent, mocking, salient; 
and then Christine’s attempted the same strain, and 
another cry of laughter from Mela followed. 

“Well, I always did expect to lay there. But I 
reckon it’s all right. It woon’t be a great while, 
now, anyway. Jacob, I don’t believe I’m a-goin’ to 
live very long. I knowit don’t agree with me, here.” 

“Oh, I guess it does, ’Liz’beth. You're just a 
little pulled down with the weather. It’s coming 
spring, and you feel it; but the doctor says you’re 
all right. I stopped in, on the way up; and he 
Says so.” 

“T reckon he don’t know everything,” the old 
woman persisted. “I’ve been runnin’ down ever 
since we left Moffitt, and I didn’t feel any too well 
there, even. It’s a very strange thing, Jacob, that 
the richer you git, the less you ain’t able to stay 
where you want to, dead or alive.” 

“It’s for the children we do it,” said Dryfoos. 
“We got to give them their chance in the world.” 

“Oh, the world! They ought to bear the yoke in 
their youth, like we done. I know it’s what Coon- 
rod would like to do.” 

Dryfoos got upon his feet. “If Coonrod ’ll mind 
his own business, and do what I want him to, he’ll 
have yoke enough to bear.” He moved from his 
wife, without further effort to comfort her, and 
pottered heavily out into the dining-room. Beyond 
its obscurity stretched the glitter of the deep draw- 
ing-room. His feet, in their broad, flat slippers, 
made no sound on the dense carpet, and he came 
unseen upon the little group there near the piano. 
Mela perched upon the stool with her back to the 
keys, and Beaton bent over Christine, who sat with 
a banjo in her lap, letting him take her hands and 
put them in the right place on the instrument. 
Her face was radiant with happiness, and Mela was 
watching her with foolish, unselfish pleasure in her 
bliss. 

There was nothing wrong in the affair to a man of 
Dryfoos’s traditions and perceptions, and if it had 
been at home in the farm sitting-room, or even in 
his parlor at Moffitt, he would not have minded a 
young man’s placing his daughter’s hands on a 
banjo, or even holding them there; it would have 
seemed a proper attention from him if he was 


78 


courting her. But here, in such a house as this, 
with the daughter of a man who had made as much 
money as he had, he did not know but it was a 
liberty. He felt the angry doubt of it which beset 
him in regard to so many experiences of his 
. changed life; he wanted to show his sense of it, if 
it was a liberty, but he did not know how, and he 
did not know that it was so. Besides, he could not 
help a touch of the pleasure in Christine’s happiness 
which Mela showed; and he would have gone back 
to the library, if he could, without being discovered. 

But Beaton had seen him, and Dryfoos, with a 
nonchalant nod to the young man, came forward. 
“What you got there, Christine 2” 

“A banjo,” said the girl, blushing in her father’s 
presence. 

Mela gurgled, “Mr. Beaton is learnun’ her the 
first position.” 

Beaton was not embarrassed. He was in evening 
dress, and his face, pointed with its brown beard, 
showed extremely handsome above the expanse of 
his broad white shirt front. He gave back as 
nonchalant a nod as he had got, and without further 
greeting to Dryfoos, he said to Christine: “No, no. 
You must keep your hand and arm so.” He held 
them in position. “There! Now strike with your 
right hand. See?” 

“I don’t believe I can ever learn,” said the girl, 
with a fond upward look at him. 

‘Oh yes, you can,” said Beaton. 

They both ignored Dryfoos in the little play of 
protests which followed, and he said, half jocosely, 
half suspiciously, “And is the banjo the fashion, 
now?” He remembered it as the emblem of low- 
down show business, and associated it with end-men, 
and blackened faces, and grotesque shirt collars. 

“It’s all the rage,” Mela shouted in answer for 
all. “Everybody plays it. Mr. Beaton borrowed 
this from a lady friend of his,” 

“Humph! Pity I got you a piano, then,” said 
Dryfoos. “A banjo would have been cheaper.” 

Beaton so far admitted him to the conversation 
as to seem reminded of the piano by his men- 
tioning it. He said to Mela, “ Oh, won’t you just 
strike those chords?” and as Mela wheeled about 
and beat the keys, he took the banjo from Christine 
and sat down with it. ‘This way!” He strum- 
med it, and murmured the tune Dryfoos had heard 
him singing from the library, while he kept his 
beautiful eyes floating on Christine’s, “You try 
that, now; it’s very simple.” 

‘“Where is Mrs. Mandel ?” Dryfoos demanded, 
trying to assert himself, 

Neither of the girls seemed to have heard him at 
first in the chatter they broke into over what Bea- 
ton proposed. Then Mela said, absently, “Oh, she 
had to go out to see one of her friends that’s sick,” 
and she struck the piano keys. ‘Come; try it, 
Chris |” | 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Dryfoos turned about unheeded, and went back to: 
the library. He would have liked to put Beaton 
out of his house, and in his heart he burned against 
him as a contumacious hand; he would have liked 
to discharge him from the art department of Avery 
Other Week at once. But he was aware of not hav- 
ing treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the 
young man had returned his behavior in kind, with 
an electrical response to his own feeling, had he. 
any right to complain? After all, there was no. 
harm in his teaching Christine the banjo. 

His wife still sat looking into the fire. “I can’t 
see,” she said, “as we’ve got a bit more comfort of 
our lives, Jacob, because we’ve got such piles and 
piles of money. I wisht to gracious we was back 
on the farm this minute. I wisht you had held 
out ag’inst the childern about sellin’ it; ’twould ’a 
bin the best thing fur em, I say. I believe in my 
soul they'll git Spoiled, here in New York. I kin 
See a change in ’em a’ready—in the girls.” 

Dryfoos stretched himself on the lounge again. 
‘I can’t see as Coonrod is much comfort, either. 
Why ain’t he here with his sisters 2 What does all 
that work of his on the East side amount to? It 
seems as if he done it to cross me, as much as any- 
thing.” Dryfoos complained to his wife on the 
basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life 
often survives the sense of intellectual equality. 
He did not expect her to reason with him, but there 
was help in her listening, and though she could only 
soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were 
often wide of the purpose, he still went to her for. 
solace. ‘Here, I’ve gone into this newspaper busi- 
ness, or whatever it is, on his account, and he don’t 
Seem any more satisfied than ever. I can see he 
hain’t got his heart in it.” : 

‘The pore boy tries; I know he does, Jacob; 
and he wants to please you. But he give up a 
good deal when he give up bein’ a preacher; I 
s’pose we ought to remember that.” 

“A preacher!” sneered Dryfoos. “TI reckon 
bein’ a preacher wouldn’t satisfy him now. He had 
the impudence to tell me that he would like to be 
a priest; and he threw it up to me that he never: 
could be, because I’d kept him from studyin’.” 

“He don’t mean a Catholic priest—not a Roman 
one, Jacob,” the old woman explained, wistfully. 
“He’s told me all about it. They ain’t the kind 
o’ Catholics we been used to; some sort of ’Pisco- 
palians ; and they do a heap o’ good amongst the 
poor folks over there. He Says we ain’t got any 
idea how folks lives in them tenement-houses, hun- 
derds of ’em in one house, and whole families in a 
room; and it burns in his heart to help ’em like 
them Fathers, as he calls em, that gives their lives 
to it. He can’t be a Father, he says, because he. 
can’t git the eddication, now; but he can be a Bro- 
ther; and I can’t find a word to Say ag’inst it, when 
he gits to talkin’, Jacob,” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“T ain’t saying anything against his priests, ’Liz’- 
beth,” said Dryfoos. ‘“They’re all well enough in 
their way; they’ve given up their lives to it, and 
it’s a matter of business with them, like any other. 
But what I’m talking about now, is Coonrod. I 
don’t object to his doin’ all the charity he wants 
to, and the Lord knows [ve never been stingy with 
him about it. He might have all the money he 
wants, to give round any way he pleases.” 

““That’s what I told him once, but he says money 
ain’t the thing—or not the only thing you got to 
give to them poor folks. You got to give your 
time, and your knowledge, and your love—I don’t 
know what all—you got to give yourself, if you ex- 
pect to help ’em. That’s what Coonrod says.” 

“Well, I can tell him that charity begins at 
home,” said Dryfoos, sitting up, in his impatience. 
“ And he’d better give himself to ws a little—to his 
old father and mother. And his sisters. What’s 
he doin’ goin’ off there, to his meetings, and I don’t 
know what all, an’ leavin’ them here alone ?” : 

“Why, ain’t Mr. Beaton with ’em ?” asked the old 
woman. ‘TI thought I heared his voice.” 

“Mr. Beaton! Of course, he is! And who’s Mr. 
Beaton, anyway ?” 

“Why, ain’t he one of the men in Coonrod’s 
office? I thought I heared—” 

“Yes, he is! But whois he? What’s he doing 
round here? Is he makin’ up to Christine ?” 

“TY reckon he is. From Mely’s talk, she’s about 
crazy over the fellow. Don’t you like him, Jacob ?” 

“T don’t know him, or what he is. He hasn’t got 
any manners. Who brought him here? How’d he 
come to come, in the first place ?” 

“Mr. Fulkerson brung him, I believe,” said the old 
woman, patiently. 

“Fulkerson !” Dryfoos snorted. ‘‘ Where’s Mrs. 
Mandel, I should like to know? He brought her, too. 
Does she go traipsin’ off this way, every evening ?” 

““No; she seems to be here pretty regular most 
o’ the time. I don’t know how we could ever git 
along without her, Jacob; she seems to know just 
what to do, and the girls would be ten times as out- 
breakin’ without her. I hope you ain’t thinkin’ o’ 
turnin’ her off, Jacob?” 


19 


Dryfoos did not think it necessary to answer 
such a question. “It’s all Fulkerson, Fulkerson, 
Fulkerson. It seems to me that Fulkerson about 
runs this family. He brought Mrs. Mandel, and 
he brought that Beaton, and he brought that Boston 
fellow! I guess I give him a dose, though; and 
Pll learn Fulkerson that he can’t have everything 
his own way. I don’t want anybody to help me 
spend my money. I made it, and I can manage it. 
I guess Mr. Fulkerson can bear a little watching, 
now. He’s been travelling pretty free, and he’s got 
the notion he’s driving,maybe. I’m a-going to look 
after that book a little myself.” 

“You'll kill yourself, Jacob,” said his wife, “ try- 
in’ to do so many things. And what is it all fur? 
I don’t see as we’re better off, any, for all the money. 
It’s just as much care as it used to be when we was 
all there on the farm together, I wisht we could go 
back, Ja—” 

“We can’t go back !’ shouted the old man, fierce- 
ly. “There’s no farm any more to go back to. The 
fields is full of gas wells and oil wells and hell holes 
generally; the house is tore down, and the barn’s 
goin’—” 

“The barn! gasped the old woman. 
my 1? 

“Tf I was to give all ’m worth this minute, we 
couldn’t go back to the farm, any more than them 
girls in there could go back and be little children, 
I don’t say we’re any better off, for the money. I’ve 
got more of it now than I ever had; and there’s no. 
end to the luck; it pours in. But I feel like I was 
tied hand and foot. I don’t know which way to 
move; I don’t know what’s best to do about any- 
thing. The money don’t seem to buy anything but 
more and more care and trouble. We got a big 
house that we ain’t at home in; and we got a lot of 
hired girls round under our feet that hinder and 
don’t help. Our children don’t mind us, and we 
got no friends or neighbors. But it had to be. - I 
couldn’t help but sell the farm, and we can’t go back 
to it, for it ain’t there. So don’t you say anything 
more about it, Lizbeth !” 

“Pore Jacob!” said his wife. 
dear.” 


73 Oh, 


“Well, I woon’t, 


LV 


Ir was clear to Beaton that Dryfoos distrusted 
him; and the fact heightened his pleasure in Chris- 
tine’s liking for him. He was as sure of this as he 
was of the other, though he was not so sure of any 
reason for his pleasure in it. She had her charm; 
the charm of wildness to which a certain wildness 
in himself responded; and there were times when 
his fancy contrived a common future for them, 
which would have a prosperity forced from the old 


fellow’s love of the girl. Beaton liked the idea of 
this compulsion better than he liked the idea of the 
money; there was something a little repulsive mn 
that; he imagined himself rejecting it; he almost 
wished he was enough in love with the girl to marry 
her without it; that would be fine. He was taken 
with her in a certain measure, in a certain way; 
the question was in what measure, in what way. 

It was partly to escape from this question that 


80 


he hurried down-town, and decided to spend with 
the Leightons the hour remaining on his hands be- 
fore it was time to go to the reception for which he 
was dressed. It seemed to him important that he 
should see Alma Leighton. After all, it was her 
‘charm that was most abiding with him; perhaps it 
was to be final. He found himself very happy in 
his present relations with her. She had dropped 
that barrier of pretences and ironical surprise. It 
seemed to him that they had gone back to that old 
‘ground of common artistic interest which he had 
found so pleasant the summer before. Apparently 
she and her mother had both forgiven his neglect 
of them in the first months of their stay in New 
York; he was sure that Mrs. Leighton liked him as 
well as ever, and if there was still something a little 
provisional in Alma’s manner at times, it was some. 
thing that piqued more than it discouraged ; it made 
him curious, not anxious. 

He found the young ladies with Fulkerson when 
he rang. He seemed to be amusing them both, and 
they were both amused beyond the merit of so 
small a pleasantry, Beaton thought, when Fulkerson 
said, “Introduce myself, Mr. Beaton: Mr. Fulker- 
son, of Hvery Other Week. Think I’ve met you at 
our place.” The girls laughed, and Alma explained 
that her mother was not very well, and would be 
sorry not to see him. Then she turned, as he felt, 
perversely, and went on talking with Fulkerson, and 
left him to Miss Woodburn. 

She finally recognized his disappointment: “Ah 
don’t often get a chance at you, Mr. Beaton, and 
Ahm just goin’ to toak yo’ to death. Yo’ have 
been Soath yo’self, and yo’ know ho’ we do toak.” 

‘““Pve survived to say yes,” Beaton admitted. 

“Oh, now, do you think we toak so much mo’ 
than you do in the No’th?” the young lady dep- 
ecated. 

“I don’t know. I only know you can’t talk too 
much for me. I should like to hear you say Soath 
and ho’se and aboat for the rest of my life.” 

“That’s what Ah call raght personal, Mr. Beaton. 
Now Ahm goin’ to be personal, too.” Miss Wood- 
burn flung out over her lap the Square of cloth she 
was embroidering, and asked him, “ Don’t you think 
that’s beautiful? Now, as an awtust—a great 
awtust ?” 

“As a great awtust, yes,” said Beaton, mimicking 
her accent. “If I were less than great I might 
have something to say about the arrangement of 
colors. You’re as bold and original as Nature.” 

‘Really? Oh, now, do tell me yo’ favo’ite colo’, 
Mr. Beaton.” 

‘“My favorite color? Bless my soul,why should I 
prefer any? Is blue good, or red wicked? Do peo- 
ple have favorite colors?” Beaton found himself 
suddenly interested. 

“Of co’se they do,” answered the girl. ™ Don’t 
awtusts ?” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“T never heard of one that had—consciously.” 

“Is it possible? I supposed they all had. Now 
mah favo’ite colo’ is gawnet. Don’t you think it’s 
a pretty colo’ ?” 

“Tt depends upon how it’s used. Do you mean in 
neckties?” Beaton stole a glance at the one Ful- 
kerson was wearing. 

Miss Woodburn laughed with her face bowed 
upon her wrist. “Ah do think you gentlemen in 
the No’th awe ten tahms as lahvely as the ladies.” 

“Strange,” said Beaton. ‘In the South—Soath, 
excuse me !—I made the observation that the ladies 
were ten times as lively as the gentlemen. What 
is that you’re working ?” 

“This?” Miss Woodburn gave it another flirt, 
and looked at it with a glance of dawning recog- 
nition. ‘Oh, this is a table covah. Wouldn’t you 
lahke to see where it’s to go?” 

“Why, certainly.” 

“Well, if you’ll be raght good I'll let yo’ give me 
some professional advass aboat putting something 
in the co’ners or not, when you have seen it on the 
table.” 

She rose and led the way into the other room. 
Beaton knew she wanted to talk with him about some- 
thing else; but he waited patiently to let her play 
her comedy out. She spread the cover on the table, 
and he advised her, as he saw she wished, against 
putting anything in the corners; just run a line of 
her stitch around the edge, he said. 

“Mr. Fulkerson and Ah, why we’ve been having a 
regular faght aboat it,” she commented. “But we 
both agreed, fahnally, to leave it to you; Mr. Ful- 
kerson said you’d be sure to be raght. Ah’m so glad 
you took mah sahde. But he’s a great admahrer 
of yours, Mr. Beaton,” she concluded, demurely, 
suggestively. 

“Is he? Well, I’m a great admirer of Fulker- 
son’s,” said Beaton, with a capricious willingness to 
humor her wish to talk about Fulkerson. “He's a 
capital fellow; generous, magnanimous, with quite 
an ideal of friendship, and an eye single to the main 
chance all the time. He would advertise Huery 
Other Week on his family vault.” 

Miss Woodburn laughed, and said she should 
tell him what Beaton had said. 

“Do. But he’s used to defamation from me, and 
he’ll think you’re joking.” 

“Ah suppose,” said Miss Woodburn, “that he’s 
quahte the tahpe of a New York business man.” 
She added, as if it followed logically, ‘“‘He’s so dif- 
ferent from what I thought a New York business 
man would be.” 

“Tt’s your Virginia tradition to despise business,” 
said Beaton, rudely. 

Miss Woodburn laughed again. “ Despahse it ? 
Mah goodness! we want to get into it, and ‘ work it 
fo’ all it’s wo’th,’ as Mr, Fulkerson says. That tra- 
dition is all past. You don’t know what the Soath 


* 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 81 


isnow. Ah suppose mah fathaw despahses business, 
but he’s a tradition himself, as Ah tell him.” Bea- 
ton would have enjoyed joining the young lady in 
anything she might be going to say in derogation 
of her father, but he restrained himself, and she 
went on more and more as if she wished to ac- 
‘count for her father’s habitual hauteur with Bea- 
ton, if not to excuse it. “Ah tell him he don’t 
understand the rising generation. He was brought 
up in the old school, and he thinks we’re all just 
lahke he was when he was young, with all those 
ahdeals of chivalry and family; but mah goodness ! 
it’s money that cyoants no’adays in the Soath, just 
lahke it does everywhere else. Ah suppose, if we 
‘could have slavery back in the fawm mah fathaw 
thinks it could have been brought up to, when the 
‘commercial spirit wouldn’t let it alone, it would be 


'_the best thing; but we can’t have it back, and Ah 


tell him we had better have the commercial spirit, 
as the next best thing.” 

Miss Woodburn went on, with sufficient loyalty 
and piety, to expose the difference of her own and 
her father’s ideals, but with what Beaton thought 
Jess reference to his own unsympathetic attention 
than to a knowledge finally of the personnel and 
‘materiel of Huery Other Week, and Mr. Fulkerson’s 
relation to the enterprise. ‘You most excuse my 
asking so many questions, Mr. Beaton. You know 
it’s all mah doing that we awe heah in New York. 
Ah just told my fathaw that if he was evah goin’ 
to do anything with his wrahtings, he had got to 
come No’th, and Ah made him come. Ah believe 
he’d have staid in the Soath all his lahfe. And 
now Mr. Fulkerson wants him to let his editor see 
some of his wrahtings, and Ah wanted to know 
something aboat the magazine. We awe a great 
deal excited aboat it in this ho’se, you know, Mr, 
Beaton,” she concluded, with a look that now trans- 
ferred the interest from Fulkerson to Alma. She 
led the way back to the room where they were sit- 
ting, and went up to triumph over Fulkerson with 
Beaton’s decision about the table cover. 

Alma was left with Beaton near the piano, and he 
began to talk about the Dryfooses, as he sat down 
‘on the piano stool. He said he had been giving 
Miss Dryfoos a lesson on the banjo; he had bor- 
rowed the banjo of Miss Vance. Then he struck 
the chord he had been trying to teach Christine, 
and played over the air he had sung. 

“How do you like that?” he asked, whirling 
round, 

“Tt seems rather a disrespectful little tune, some- 
how,” said Alma, placidly. 

Beaton rested his elbow on the corner of the 
piano, and gazed dreamily at her. “Your per- 
ceptions are wonderful. It is disrespectful, I 
played it, up there, because I felt disrespectful to 
them.” 

“Do you claim that as a merit ?” 

6 


“No, I state it as a fact. How can you respect 
such people ?” 

“You might respect yourself, then,” said the girl. 
‘Or perhaps that wouldn’t be so easy, either.” 

“No; it wouldn’t. I like to have you say these 
things to me,” said Beaton, impartially. 

“Well, I like to say them,” Alma returned. 

“They do me good.” 

‘Oh, I don’t know that that was my motive.” 

“There is no one like you—no one,” said Beaton, 
as if apostrophizing her in her absence. “To come 
from that house, with its assertions of money—you 
can hear it chink; you can smell the foul old bank- 
notes ; it stifles you—into an atmosphere like this, is 
like coming into another world.” 

“Thank you,” said Alma. “I’m glad there isn’t 
that unpleasant odor here; but I wish there was a 
little more of the chinking.” 

“No,no! Don’t say that!” he implored. “Tlike 
to think that there is one soul uncontaminated by 
the sense of money in this big, brutal, sordid city.” 

‘You mean two,” said Alma, with modesty. “But 
if you stifle at the Dryfooses’, why do you go there ?” 

“Why do I go?” he mused. “ Don’t you believe 
in knowing all the natures, the types, you can? 
Those girls are a strange study: the young one is a 
simple, earthly creature, aS common as an oat field ; 
and the other a sort of sylvan life; fierce, flashing, 
feline—” 

Alma burst out into a laugh. “What apt al- 
literation! And do they like being studied? I 
should think the sylvan life might—scratch.”’ 

“No,” said Beaton, with melancholy absence; 
“it only—purrs,” 

The girl felt a rising indignation. “Well, then, 
Mr. Beaton; I should hope it would scratch, and 
bite, too. I think you’ve no business to go about 
studying people, as you do. It’s abominable.” 

“Go on,” said the young man, “That Puritan 
conscience of yours! It appeals to the old Cov- 
enanter strain in me—like a voice of pre-existence. 
Go on—” 

“Oh, if I went on I should merely say it was not 
only abominable, but contemptible.” 

“You could be my guardian angel, Alma,” said 
the young man, making his eyes more and more 
slumbrous and dreamy. 

“Stuff! I hope I have a soul above buttons !” 

He smiled, as she rose, and followed her across 
the room. “ Good-night, Mr. Beaton,” she said. 

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson came in from the 
other room. “What! You're not going, Beaton ?” 

“Yes; I’m going toa reception. I stopped in on 
my way.” 

“To kill time,” Alma explained. 

“Well,” said Fulkerson, gallantly, “this is the 
last place I should like to do it. But I guess I’d 
better be going, too. It has sometimes occurred to 
me that there is such a thing as staying too late. 


82 


But with Brother Beaton, here, just starting in for 
an evening’s amusement, it does seem a little early 
yet. Can’t you urge me to stay, somebody ?” 

The two girls laughed, and Miss Woodburn said, 
“Mr. Beaton is such a butterfly of fashion! Ah 
wish Ah was on mah way to a pawty. Ah feel 
quahte envious.” 

“Bat he didn’t say it to make you,” Alma ex- 
plained with meek coftness. 


BrEaTon went away with the smile on his face 
which he had kept in listening to Fulkerson, and 
earried it with him to the reception. He believed 
that Alma was vexed with him for more personal 
reasons than she had implied; it flattered him that 
she should have resented what he told her of the 
Dryfooses. She had scolded him in their behalf 
apparently; but really because he had made her 
jealous by his interest, of whatever kind, in some 
one else. What followed, had followed naturally. 
Unless she had been quite a simpleton she could 
not have met his provisional love-making on any 
other terms; and the reason why Beaton chiefly 
liked Alma Leighton was that she was not a simple- 
ton. Even up in the country, when she was over- 
awed by his acquaintance, at first, she was not very 
deeply overawed, and at times she was not overawed 
at all. Atsuch times she astonished him by taking 
his most solemn histrionics with flippant incredulity, 
and even burlesquing them. But he could see, all 
the same, that he had caught her fancy, and he 
admired the skill with which she punished his neglect 
when they met in New York. He had really come 
very near forgetting the Leightons; the intangible 
obligations of mutual kindness which hold some 
men so fast, hung loosely upon him; it would 
not have hurt him to break from them altogether ; 
but when he recognized them at last, he found 
that it strengthened them indefinitely to have Alma 
ignore them so completely. If she had been sen- 
timental, or softly reproachful, that would have 
been the end; he could not have stood it; he would 
have had to drop her. But when she met him on 
his own ground, and obliged Aim to be sentimental, 
the game was in her hands. Beaton laughed, now, 
when he thought of that, and he said to himself 
that the girl had grown immensely since she had 
come to New York; nothing seemed to have been 
lost upon her; she must have kept her eyes uncom- 
monly wide open. He noticed that especially in 
their talks over her work; she had profited by every- 
thing she had seen and heard; she had all of Wet- 
more’s ideas pat; it amused Beaton to see how she 
seized every useful word that he dropped, too, and 
turned him to technical account whenever she could, 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. ay 


“Well, we can’t all be swells. Where is your 
party, anyway, Beaton?” asked Fulkerson. ‘ How 
do you manage to get your invitations to those 
things? I suppose a fellow has to keep hinting 
round pretty lively, heigh ?” 

Beaton took these mockeries serenely, and shook 
hands with Miss Woodburn, with the effect of hav- 
ing already shaken hands with Alma. She stood. 
with hers clasped behind her. 


He liked that; she had a great deal of talent; there- 
was no question of that; if she were a man there 
could be no question of her future. He began to 
construct a future for her; it included provision 
for himself too; it was a common future, in which 
their lives and work were united. 

He was full of the glow of its prosperity when he- 
met Margaret Vance at the reception. 

The house was one where people might chat a. 
long time together without publicly committing 
themselves to an interest in each other except such as 
grew out of each other’s ideas. Miss Vance was 
there because she united in her catholic sympa- 
thies or ambitions the objects of the fashionable. 
people and of the esthetic people who met there on 
common ground. It was almost the only house in 
New York where this happened often, and it did 
not happen very often there. It was a literary 
house, primarily, with artistic qualifications, and the: 
frequenters of it were mostly authors and artists; 
Wetmore, who was always trying to fit everything 
with a phrase, said it was the unfrequenters who. 
were fashionable. There was great ease there, and 
simplicity ; and if there was not distinction, it was. 
not for want of distinguished people, but because 
there seems to be some solvent in New York life- 
that reduces all men toa common level, that touches 
everybody with its potent magic and brings to the: 
surface the deeply underlying nobody. The effect 
for some temperaments, for consciousness, for ego- 
tism, is admirable; for curiosity, for hero-worship, 
it is rather baffling. It is the spirit of the street 
transferred to the drawing-room ; indiscriminating, 
levelling, but doubtless finally wholesome, and wit- 
nessing the immensity of the place, if not consenting 
to the grandeur of reputations or presences. 

Beaton now denied that this house represented a 
salon at all, in the old sense; and he held that the 
salon was impossible, even undesirable, with us, 
when Miss Vance sighed for it. At any rate, he 
said that this turmoil of coming and going, this 
bubble and babble, this cackling and hissing of con- 
versation, was not the expression of any such civil- 
ization as had created the salon. Here, he owned 
were the elements of intellectual delightfulness, but 


he said their assemblage in such quantity alone de- 
nied the salon; there was too much of a good thing, 
The French word implied a long evening of general 
talk among the guests, crowned with a little chicken 
at supper, ending at cock-crow. Here was tea, 
with milk or with lemon—baths of it—and claret-cup 
for the hardier spirits throughout the evening. It 
was very nice, very pleasant, but it was not the little 
chicken—not the salon. In fact, he affirmed, the 
salon descended from above, out of the great world, 
and included the esthetic world init, But our great 
world, the rich people, were Stupid, with no wish to 
be otherwise ; they were not even curious about au- 
thors and artists. Beaton fancied himself speaking 
impartially, and so he allowed himself to speak bit- 
terly; he said that in no other city in the world, 
except Vienna, perhaps, were such people so little a 
part of society, 

“Tt isn’t altogether the rich people’s fault,” said 
Margaret; and she spoke impartially, too. ‘Idon’ 
believe that the literary men and the artists would 
like a salon that descended to them. Madame 
Geoffrin, you know, was very plebeian; her husband 
was a business man of some sort.” 

“He would have been a howling swell in New 
York,” said Beaton, still impartially. 

Wetmore came up to their corner, with a scroll of 
bread and butter in one hand and a cup of tea in the 
other. Large and fat, and clean Shaven, he looked 
like a monk in evening dress, 


“We were talking about salons,” said Margaret, 


“Why don’t you open a saloon yourself ?”” asked 
' Wetmore, breathing thickly from the anxiety of 
getting through the crowd without Spilling his tea. 

“Like poor Lady Barberina Lemon 2?” said the 
girl, with a laugh. “What a good story! That 
idea of a woman who couldn’t be interested in any 
of the arts because she was socially and traditionally 
the material of them! We can never reach that 
height of nonchalance in this country.” 

“Not if we tried seriously ?” suggested the paint- 
er. “ve an idea that if the Americans ever gave 
their minds to, that sort of thing, they could take 
the palm—or the cake, as Beaton here would say— 
just as they do in everything else. When we do 
have an aristocracy, it will be an aristocracy that 
will go ahead of anything the world has ever seen. 
Why don’t somebody make a beginning, and go in 
openly for an ancestry, and a lower middle class, 
and an hereditary legislature, and all the rest ? 
We’ve got liveries, and crests, and palaces, and caste 
feeling. We’re all right as far as we’ve gone, and 
we've got the money to go any length.” 

“Like your natural-gas man, Mr. Beaton,” 
the girl, with a smiling glance round at him. 

“Ah!” said Wetmore, stirring his tea, “has Bea- 
ton got a natural-gas man 2” 

“ My natural-gas man,” said Beaton, ignoring Wet- 
more’s question, “doesn’t know how to live in his 


said 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


83 


palace yet, and I doubt if he has any caste feeling. 
I fancy his family believe themselves Victims of it, 
They say—one of the young ladies does—that she 
never saw such an unsociable place as New York ; 
nobody calls.” 

“That’s good!” gaid Wetmore, “J suppose 
they’re all ready for company too: good cook, fur- 
niture, servants, carriages ?” 

‘‘ Galore,” said Beaton. 

Well, that’s too bad. There’s a chance for 
you, Miss Vance. Doesn’t your philanthropy em- 
brace the socially destitute as well as the finan- 
cially? Just think of a family like that, without a 
friend, in a great city! I should think common 
charity had a duty, there—not to mention the un. 
common,” 

He distinguished that kind as 
glance of ironical deference. She had a repute for 
good works which was out of proportion to the 
works, as it always is, but she was really active in 
that way, under the. vague obligation, which we now 
all feel, to be helpful. She was of the church 
which seems to have found a reversion to the im. 
posing ritual of the past the way back to the early 
ideals of Christian brotherhood. 

“Oh, they seem to have Mr. Beaton,” Margaret 
answered, and Beaton felt obscurely flattered by her 
reference to his patronage of the Dryfooses, 

He explained to Wetmore, “ They have me because 
they partly own me. Dryfoos is Fulkergon’s finan- 
cial backer in Huery Other Week,” 

‘Is thatso? Well, that’s interesting, too, Aren? 
you rather astonished, Miss Vance, to see what a 
pretty thing Beaton is making of that magazine of 
his ?” 

“Oh,” said Margaret, “it’s go very nice, every 
way; it makes you feel as if you did have a country, 
after all. It’s as chic—that detestable little word! 
—as those new French books,” 

‘Beaton modelled it on them. But you mustn’ 
suppose he does everything about Huery Other 
Week » he'd like you to, Beaton, you haven’t come 
up to that cover of your first number, since. That 
was the design of one of my pupils, Miss Vance—a 
little girl that Beaton discovered down in New 
Hampshire last summer.” 

“Oh yes. And have you great hopes of her, Mr, 
Wetmore ?” 

“She seems to have more love of it and knack for 
it than any one of her sex Dve Seen yet. It really 
looks like a case of art for art’s sake, at times, But 
you can’t tell. They’re liable to get married at any 
moment, you know. Look here, Beaton, when your 
natural-gas man gets to the picture- buying Stage in 
his development, just remember your old friends, 
will you? You know, Miss Vance, those new fel. 
lows have their regular stages, They never know 
what to do with their money, but they find out that 
people buy pictures, at one point. They shut your 


Margaret’s by a 


84 A Hazard of 
things up in their houses where nobody comes; and 
after a while they overeat themselves—they don’t 
know what else to do—and die of apoplexy, and 
leave your pictures to a gallery, and then they see 
the light. It’s slow, but it’s pretty sure. Well, I 
see Beaton isn’t going to move on, as he ought to 
do; and so 7 must. He always was an unconven- 
tional creature.” 

Wetmore went away, but Beaton remained, and he 
outstayed several other people who came up to speak 
to Miss Vance. She was interested in everybody, 
and she liked the talk of these clever literary, artis- 
tic, clerical, even theatrical people, and she liked the 
sort of court with which they recognized her fashion 
as well as her cleverness; it was very pleasant to 
be treated intellectually as if she were one of them- 
selves, and socially as if she were not habitually the 
same, but a sort of guest in Bohemia, a distinguished 
stranger. If it was Arcadia rather than Bohemia, 
still she felt her quality of distinguished stranger. 
The flattery of it touched her fancy, and not her 
vanity ; she had very little vanity. Beaton’s devotion 
made the same sort of appeal; it was not so much 
that she liked him as she liked being the object of 
his admiration. She was a girl of genuine sympa- 
thies, intellectual rather than sentimental. In fact 
she was an intellectual person, whom qualities of the 
heart saved from being disagreeable, as they saved 
her on the other hand from being worldly or cruel in 
her fashionableness. She had read a great many 
books, and had ideas about them, quite courageous 
and original ideas; she knew about pictures—she 
had been in Wetmore’s class; she was fond of 
music; she was willing to understand even politics ; 
in Boston she might have been agnostic, but in New 
York she was sincerely religious; she was very ac- 
complished, and perhaps it was her goodness that 
prevented her feeling what was not best in Beaton. 

‘Do you think,” she said, after the retreat of one 
of the comers and goers left her alone with him 
again, “that these young ladies would like me to 
call on them ?” 

“Those young ladies?” Beaton echoed. 
Leighton and—” 

‘““No; I have been there with my aunt’s cards 
already.” 

“Oh yes,” said Beaton, as if he had known of it; 
he admired the pluck and pride with which Alma 
had refrained from ever mentioning the fact to 
him, and had kept her mother from mentioning it, 
which must have been difficult. 

“IT mean the Miss Dryfooses. It seems really 
barbarous, if nobody goes near them. We do all 
kinds of things, and help all kinds of people in 
some ways, but we let strangers remain strangers 
unless they know how to make their way among us.” 

“The Dryfooses certainly wouldn’t know how to 
make their way among you,” said Beaton, with a sort 
of dreamy absence in his tone. 


“ Miss 


New Fortunes. 


Miss Vance went on, speaking out the process of 
reasoning in her mind, rather than any conclusions — 
she had reached. “ We defend ourselves by trying 
to believe that they must have friends of their own, 
or that they would think us patronizing, and wouldn’t 
like being made the objects of social charity; but 
they needn’t really suppose anything of the kind.” 

“T don’t imagine they would,” said Beaton. “I 
think they’d be only too happy to have you come. 
But you wouldn’t know what to do with each other, 
indeed, Miss Vance.”’ 

‘Perhaps we shall like each other,” said the girl 
bravely, ‘“‘and then we shall know. What church 
are they of ?” 

“T don’t believe they’re of any,” said Beaton. 
“The mother was brought up a Dunkard.” 

“ A Dunkard ?” 

Beaton told what he knew of the primitive sect, 
with its early Christian polity, its literal interpreta- 
tion of Christ’s ethics, and its quaint ceremonial 
of foot-washing ; he made something picturesque of 
that. “The father is a Mammon-worshipper, pure 
and simple. I suppose the young ladies go to 
church, but I don’t know where. They haven’t tried 
to convert me.” 

“Pll tell them not to despair—after I’ve con- 
verted them,” said Miss Vance. “ Will you let me 
use you as a point d’appui, Mr. Beaton ?” 

“‘ Any way you like. If you’re really going to see 
them, perhaps I’d better make a confession. I 
left your banjo with them, after I got it put in 
order.” 

“How very nice! 
terest already.” 

“Do you mean the banjo, or— ?” 

“The banjo, decidedly. Which of them plays?” 

“Neither. But the eldest heard that the banjo 
was ‘all the rage,’ as the youngest says. Perhaps 
you can persuade them that good works are the rage 
too.” 

Beaton had no very lively belief that Margaret 
would go to see the Dryfooses; he did so few of 
the things he proposed that he went upon the theory 
that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a 
cruel amusement in figuring the possible encounter 
between Margaret Vance, with her intellectual ele- 
gance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, 
and those girls with their rude past, their false and 
distorted perspective, their sordid and hungry sel- 
fishness, and their faith in the omnipotence of their 
father’s wealth wounded by their experience of its 
present social impotence. At the bottom of his 
heart he sympathized with them rather than with 
her; he was more like them. 

People had ceased coming, 


Then we have a common in- 


and some of them: 


_were going. Miss Vance said she must go too, and 


she was about to rise, when the host came up with 
March ; Beaton turned away. 
“Miss Vance, I want to introduce Mr, March, the 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


editor of Hvery Other Week. You oughtn’t to be re- 
stricted to the art department. We literary fellows 
think that arm of the service gets too much of the 
glory nowadays.” His banter was for Beaton, but 
he was already beyond ear-shot, and the host went 
on, “ Mr. March can talk with you about your favor- 
ite Boston. He’s just turned his back on it,” 

“Oh, I hope not!” said Miss Vance. “TI can’t 
imagine anybody voluntarily leaving Boston.” 

“TI don’t say he’s so bad as that,” said the host, 
committing March toher. ‘He came to New York 
because he couldn’t help it—like the rest of us, 
I never know whether that’s a compliment to New 
York or not.” 

They talked Boston a little while, without finding 
that they had common acquaintance there; Miss 
Vance must have concluded that society was much 
larger in Boston than she had supposed from her 
visits there, or else that March did not know many 
people in it. But she was not a girl to care much 
for the inferences that might be drawn from such 
conclusions; she rather prided herself upon de- 
spising them; and she gave herself to the pleasure 
of being talked to as if she were of March’s own 
age. In the glow of her sympathetic beauty and 
elegance, he talked his best, and tried to amuse her 
with his jokes, which he had the art of tingeing with 
a little seriousness on one side. He made her laugh ; 
and he flattered her by making her think; in her 
turn she charmed, him so much by enjoying what he 
said that he began to brag of his wife, as a good 
husband always does when another woman charms 
him; and she asked, Oh, was Mrs. March there ; 
and would he introduce her ? 


85 


She asked Mrs. March for her address, and 
whether she had a day; and she said she would 
come to see her, if she would let her. Mrs. March 
could not be so enthusiastic about her ag March 
was, but as they walked home together they talked 
the girl over, and agreed about her beauty and her 
amiability. Mrs. March said she seemed very un- 
spoiled for a person who must have been so much 
spoiled. They tried to analyze her charm, and they 
succeeded in formulating it as a combination of in- 
tellectual fashionableness and worldly innocence. 
“I think,” said Mrs. March, “ that city girls, brought 
up as she must have been, are often the most inno- 
cent of all. They never imagine the wickedness of 
the world, and if they marry happily they go through 
life as innocent as children, Everything combines 
to keep them so; the very hollowness of society 
shields them. They are the loveliest of the human 
race, But perhaps the rest have to pay too much 
for them.” 

“For such an exquisite creature as Miss Vance,” 
said March, “‘ we couldn’t pay too much.” 

A wild laughing cry suddenly broke upon the air 
at the street crossing in front of them. A girl’s 
voice called out, “Run, run, Jen! The copper is 
after you.” A woman’s figure rushed stumbling 
across the way and into the shadow of the houses, 
pursued by a burly policeman. 

The Marches went along fallen from the gay 
spirit of their talk into a silence which he broke 
with a sigh. ‘Can that poor wretch and the radi- 
ant girl we left yonder really belong to the same sys- 
tem of things? How incredible each makes the 
other seem !”” 


VI 


Mrs. Horn believed in the world and in society 
and its unwritten constitution devoutly, and she 
tolerated her niece’s benevolent activities, as she 
tolerated her esthetic sympathies, because these 
things, however oddly, were tolerated—even en- 
couraged—by society; and they gave Margaret a 
charm, they made her originality interesting. Mrs. 
Horn did not intend that they should ever gO SO 
far as to make her troublesome; and it was with a 
sense of this abeyant authority of her aunt’s that 
the girl asked her approval of her proposed call 
upon the Dryfooses. She explained as well as she 
could the social destitution of these opulent people, 
and she had of course to name Beaton as the source 
of her knowledge concerning them. 

“Did Mr. Beaton suggest your calling on them ?” 

“No; he rather discouraged it.” 

‘And why do you think you ought to go in this 
particular instance? New York is full of people 
who don’t know anybody.” 


Margaret laughed. “TI suppose it’s like any oth- 
er charity: you reach the cases you know of. The 
others you say you can’t help, and you try to ignore 
them.” . 

“It’s very romantic,” said Mrs. Hern. “T hope 
you’ve counted the cost; all the possible conse- 
quences,” 

Margaret knew that her aunt had in mind their 
common experience with the Leightons, whom, to 
give their common conscience peace, she had called 
upon with her aunt’s cards and excuses, and an 
invitation for her Thursdays, somewhat too late to 
make the visit seem a welcome to New York. She 
was so coldly received, not so much for herself as 
in her quality of envoy, that her aunt experienced 
all the comfort which vicarious penance brings, She 
did not perhaps consider’ sufficiently her niece’s 
guiltlessness in the expiation. Margaret was not 
with her at St. Barnaby’s in the fatal fortnight she 
passed there, and never saw the Leightons till she 


86 


went to callupon them. She never complained: the 
strain of asceticism, which mysteriously exists in us 
all, and makes us put peas, boiled or unboiled, in 
our shoes, gave her patience with the snub which 
the Leightons presented her for her aunt. But 
now she said with this in mind, “Nothing seems 
simpler than to get rid of people if you don’t de- 
sire to know them. You merely have to let them 
alone.”’ 

“It isn’t so pleasant, letting them alone,” said 
Mrs. Horn. 

“Or having them let you alone,” said Margaret; 
for neither Mrs. Leighton nor Alma had ever come 
to enjoy the belated hospitality of Mrs. Horn’s 
Thursdays. 

“Yes, or having them let you alone,” Mrs. Horn 
courageously consented. “ And all that I ask you, 
Margaret, is to be sure that you really want to 
know these people.” 

“T don’t,” said the girl seriously, “in the usual 
way.” 

“Then the question is whether you do in the 
unusual way. They will build a great deal upon 
you,” said Mrs. Horn, realizing how much the Leigh- 
tons must have built upon her, and how much out 
of proportion to her desert they must now dislike 
her; for she seemed to have had them on her 
mind from the time they came, and had always 
meant to recognize any reasonable claim they had 
upon her. 

“It seems very odd, very sad,” Margaret re- 
turned, “that you never can act unselfishly in society 
affairs. If I wished to go and see those girls just 
to do them a pleasure, and perhaps because if 
they’re strange and lonely, I might do them good, 
even—it would be impossible.” 

“Quite,” said her aunt. ‘Such a thing would be 
Quixotic. Society doesn’t rest upon any such basis. 
It can’t; it would go to pieces, if people acted from 
unselfish motives.” 

' “Then it’s a painted savage!” said the girl. “ All 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


its favors are really bargains. Its gifts are for gifts 
back again.” 

“Yes, that is true,” said Mrs. Horn, with no 
more sense of wrong in the fact than the politi- 
cal economist has in the fact that wages are the 
measure of necessity and not of merit. ‘You 
get what you pay for. It’s a matter of business.” 
She satisfied herself with this formula which she 
did not invent as fully as if it were a reason; but 
she did not dislike her niece’s revolt against it. 
That was part of Margarets originality, which 
pleased her aunt in proportion to her own conven- 
tionality; she was really a timid person, and she 
liked the show of courage which Margaret’s mag- 
nanimity often reflected upon her. She had through 
her a repute with people who did not know her 
well, for intellectual and moral quantities ; she was 
supposed to be literary and charitable; she almost 


‘had opinions and ideals, but really fell short of 


their possession. She thought that she set bounds 
to the girl’s originality because she recognized them, 
Margaret understood this better than her aunt, and 
knew that she had consulted her about going to see 
the Dryfooses out of deference, and with no expec- 
tation of luminous instruction. She was used to 
being a law to herself, but she knew what she might 
and might not do, so that she was rather a by-law. 
She was the kind of girl that might have fancies 
for artists and poets, but might end by marrying a 
prosperous broker, and leavening a vast lump of 
moneyed and fashionable life, with her culture, gen- 
erosity, and good-will. The intellectual interests 
were first with her, but she might be equal to sac- 
rificing them; she had the best heart, but she might 
know how to harden it; if she was eccentric, her so- 
cial orbit was defined ; comets themselves traverse 
space on fixed lines. She was like every one else, 
a congeries of contradictions and inconsistencies, 
but obedient to the general expectation of what a 
girl of her position must and must not be. Pro- 
visionally, she was very much what she liked to be. 


Vile 


Marearer Vance tried to give herself some rea- 
son for going to call upon the Dryfooses, but she 
could find none better than the wish to do a kind 
thing. This seemed queerer and less and less suf- 
ficient as she examined it, and she even admitted a 
little curiosity as a harmless element in her motive, 
without being very well satisfied with it. She tried 
to add a slight sense of social duty, and then she 
decided to have no motive at all, but simply to pay 
her visit as she would to any other eligible stran- 
gers she saw fit to call upon. She perceived that 
she must be very careful not to let them see that 
any other impulse had governed her; she deter- 


mined, if possible, to let them patronize her; to be 
very modest and sincere and diffident, and, above 
all, not to play a part. This was easy, compared 
with the choice of a manner that should convey to 
them the fact that she was not playing a part. 
When the hesitating Irish serving-man had acknow- 
ledged that the ladies were at home, and had taken 
her card to them, she sat waiting for them in the 
drawing-room. Her study of its appointments, with 
their impersonal costliness, gave her no suggestion 
how to proceed; the two sisters were upon her be- 
fore she had really decided, and she rose to meet 
them with the conviction that she was going to play 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


a part for want of some chosen means of not doing 
so. She found herself, before she knew it, making 
her banjo a property in the little comedy, and pro- 
fessing so much pleasure in the fact that Miss Dry- 
foos was taking it up; she had herself been so much 
interested by it. Anything, she said, was a relief 
from the piano; and then, between the guitar and 
the banjo, one must really choose the banjo; unless 
one wanted to devote one’s’ whole natural life to 
the violin. Of course there was the mandolin; but 
Margaret asked if they did not feel that the bit of 
shell you struck it with interposed a distance be- 
tween you and the real soul of the instrument; and 
then it did have such a faint, mosquitoy little tone! 
‘She made much of the question, which they left her 
to debate alone while they gazed solemnly at her 
till sbe characterized the tone of the mandolin, when 
Mela broke into a large, coarse laugh. 

“Well, that’s just what it does sound like,” she 
explained, defiantly, to her sister. “I always feel 
like it was going to settle somewhere, and I want to 
hit myself a slap before it begins to bite. I don’t 
see what ever brought such a thing into fashion.” 

Margaret had not expected to be so powerfully 
seconded, and she asked, after gathering herself to- 
gether,“ And you are both learning the banjo?” 

“My, no!” said Mela; “ I’ve gone through enough 
with the piano. Christine is learning it.” 

“Pm so glad you are making my banjo useful at 
the outset, Miss Dryfoos.” Both girls stared at her, 
but found it hard to cope with the fact that this 
was the lady friend whose banjo Beaton had lent 
them. “Mr. Beaton mentioned that he had left it 
here. I hope you'll keep it as long as you find it 
useful.” 

At this amiable speech even Christine could 
not help thanking her. “Of course,” she said, “I 
expect to get another, right off. Mr. Beaton is go- 
ing to choose it for me.” 

“You are very fortunate. If you haven’t a teach- 
er yet, I should so like to recommend mine.” 

Mela broke out in her laugh again. “Oh, I guess 
Christine’s pretty well suited with the one she’s got,” 
she said, with insinuation. Her sister gave her a 
frowning glance, and Margaret did not tempt her to 
explain. 

“Then that’s much better,” she said. “I havea 
kind of superstition in such matters; I don’t like 
to make a second choice. In a shop I like to take 
the first thing of the kind I’m looking for, and even 
if I choose further I come back to the original.” 

“How funny!” said Mela. “ Well, now, I’m just 
the other way. I always take the last thing, after 
[ve picked over all the rest. My luck always seems 
to be at the bottom of the heap. Now Christine, 
she’s more like you. I believe she could walk right 
up blindfolded and put her hand on the thing she 
wants every time.” 

“Pm like father,” said Christine, softened a little 


87 


by the celebration of her peculiarity. “He says 
the reason so many people don’t get what they 
want is that they don’t want it bad enough. Now 
when I want a thing, it seems to me that I want it 
all through.” 

“Well, that’s just like father, too,” said Mela. 
‘““That’s the way he done when he got that eighty- 
acre piece next to Moffitt that he kept when he 
sold the farm, and that’s got some of the best gas 
wells on it now that there is anywhere.” She 
addressed the explanation to her sister, to the 
exclusion of Margaret, who, nevertheless, listened 
with a smiling face and a resolutely polite air of be- 
ing a party to the conversation. Mela rewarded 
her amiability by saying to her finally, “‘ You never 
been in the natural gas country, have you ?” 

“Oh,no! And I should so much like to see it!” 
said Margaret, with a fervor that was partly volun- 
tary. 

“Would you? Well, we’re kind of sick of it, 
but I suppose it would strike a stranger.” 

“I never got tired of looking at the big wells 
when they lit them up,” said Christine. “It seems 
as if the world was on fire”? 

“Yes, and when you see the surface-gas burnun’? 
down in the woods, like it used to by our spring- 
house—so still, and never spreadun’ any; just like 
a bed of some kind of wild flowers when you ketch 
sight of it a piece off.” 

They began to tell of the wonders of their strange 
land in an antiphony of reminiscences and descrip- 
tions; they unconsciously imputed a merit to them- 
selves from the number and violence of the wells 
on their father’s property ; they bragged of the 
high civilization of Moffitt, which they compared to 
its advantage with that of New York. They be- 
came excited by Margaret’s interest in natural gas, 
and forgot to be suspicious and envious. 

She said, as she rose, “Oh, how much I should 
like to see it all!’ Then she made a little pause 
and added, “I’m so sorry my aunt’s Thursdays are 
over; she never has them after Lent; but we’re 
to have some people Tuesday evening at a little 
concert which a musical friend is going to give 
with some other artists. There won’t be any ban- 
joes, Pm afraid, but there’ll be some very good sing- 
ing, and my aunt would be so glad if you could 
come with your mother.” 

She put down her aunt’s card on the table near 
her, while Mela gurgled, as if it were the best joke: 
“Oh, my! Mother never goes anywhere; you 
couldn’t get her out for love or money.” But she 
was herself overwhelmed with a simple Joy at Mar. 
garet’s politeness, and showed it in a Sensuous way, 
like a child, as if she had been tickled. She came 
closer to Margaret, and seemed about to fawn phys- 
ically upon her. 

‘‘Ain’t she just as lovely as she can live ?” she 
demanded of her sister when Margaret was gone. 


88 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“T don’t know,” said Christine. “I guess she 
wanted to know who Mr. Beaton had been lending 
her banjo to.” 

“Pshaw! Do you suppose she’s in love with 
him?” asked Mela, and then she broke into her 
hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her. 
“Well, don’t eat me, Christine! I wonder who she 
is, anyway? I’m goun’ to git it out of Mr. Beaton 
the next time he calls. I guess she’s somebody. 
Mrs. Mandel can tell. I wish that old friend of hers 
would hurry up and git well—or something. But I 
guess we appeared about as well as she did. I 
could see she was afraid of you, Christine. I reck- 
on it’s gittun’ around a little about father; and 
when it does I don’t believe we shall want for 


callers. Say, are you goun’? To that concert of 


theirs ?” 

“T don’t know. Not till I know who they are.” 

“Well, we’ve got to hump ourselves if we’re goun” 
to find out before Tuesday.” 

As she went home, Margaret felt wrought in 
her that most incredible of the miracles, which, 
nevertheless, any one may make his experience. 


She felt kindly to these girls because she had tried. 


to make them happy, and she hoped that in the 


interest she had shown there had been none of 


the poison of flattery. She was aware that this was. 
a risk she ran in such an attempt to do good. If 
she had escaped this effect she was willing to leave 
the rest with Providence. 


VIII. 


Tue notion that a girl of Margaret Vance’s tra- 
ditions would naturally form of girls like Christine 
and Mela Dryfoos would be that they were abashed 
in the presence of the new conditions of their lives, 
and that they must receive the advance she had 
made them with a certain grateful humility. How- 
ever they received it, she had made it upon princi- 
ple, from a romantic conception of duty; but this 
was the way she imagined they would receive it, 
because she thought that she would have done so 
if she had been as ignorant and unbred as they. 
Her error was in arguing their attitude from her 
own temperament, and endowing them, for the pur- 
poses of argument, with her perspective. They had 
not the means, intellectual or moral, of feeling as 
she fancied. If they had remained at home on the 
farm where they were born, Christine would have 
grown up that embodiment of impassioned suspi- 
cion which we find oftenest in the narrowest spheres, 
and Mela would always have been a good-natured 
simpleton; but they would never have doubted their 
equality with the wisest and the finest. As it was, 
they had not learned enough at school to doubt it, 
and the splendor of their father’s success in mak- 
ing money had blinded them forever to any possible 
difference against them. They had no question of 
themselves in the social abeyance to which they had 
been left in New York. They had been surprised, 
mystified ; it was not what they had expected; there 
must be some mistake. They were the victims of 
an accident, which would be repaired as soon as 
the fact of their father’s wealth had got around. 
They had been steadfast in their faith, through all 
their disappointment, that they were not only better 
than most people by virtue of his money, but as 
good as any; and they took Margaret’s visit, so far 
as they investigated its motive, for a sign that at 
last it was beginning to get around; of course a 
thing could not get around in New York so quick 


as it could in a small place. They were confirmed 
in their belief by the sensation of Mrs. Mandel, when 
she returned to duty that afternoon, and they con- 
sulted her about going to Mrs. Horn’s musicale. If 
she had felt any doubt at the name—for there were: 
Horns and Horns—the address on the card put the 
matter beyond question; and she tried to make her 
charges understand what a precious chance had be- 
fallen them. She did not succeed; they had not 
the premises, the experience, for a sufficient impres- 
sion; and she undid her work in part by the effort 
to explain that Mrs. Horn’s standing was indepen- 
dent of money; that though she was positively rich,, 
she was comparatively poor. Christine inferred that 
Miss Vance had called because she wished to be the: 
first to get in with them since it had begun to get 
around. This view commended itself to Mela too, 
but without warping her from her opinion that Miss. 
Vance was all the same too sweet for anything. 


She had not so vivid a consciousness of her fa.. 


ther’s money as Christine had; but she reposed 
perhaps all the more confidently upon its power. 


She was far from thinking meanly of any one who: 


thought highly of her for it; that seemed so natu- 


ral a result as to be amiable, even admirable; she 


was willing that any such person should get all 
the good there was in such an attitude toward her. 


They discussed the matter that night at dinner 


before their father and mother, who mostly sat si- 


lent at their meals; the father frowning absently 


over his plate, with his head close to it, and making 
play into his mouth with the back of his knife (he 


had got so far toward the use of his fork as to 


despise those who still ate from the edge of their 
knives), and the mother partly missing hers at times 


in the nervous tremor that shook her face from side | 


to side. 
After a while the subject of Mela’s hoarse babble. 
and of Christine’s high-pitched, thin, sharp forays. 


—S — Fe ae 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


of assertion and denial in the field which her sis- 
ter’s voice seemed to cover, made its way into the 
old man’s consciousness, and he perceived that they 
were talking with Mrs. Mandel about it, and that his 
wife was from time to time offering an irrelevant 
and mistaken comment. He agreed with Christine, 
and silently took her view of the affair some time 
before he made any sign of having listened. There 
had been a time in his life when other things besides 
his money seemed admirable to him. He had once 
respected himself for the hard-headed, practical 
common-sense which first gave him standing among 
his country neighbors; which made him supervisor, 
school trustee, justice of the peace, county commis- 
sioner, secretary of the Moffitt County Agricultural 
Society. In those days he had served the public 
with disinterested zeal and proud ability; he used to 
write to the Lake Shore Farmer on agricultural 
topics ; he took part in opposing, through the Moffitt 
papers, the legislative waste of the people’s money; 
on the question of selling a local canal to the rail- 
road company which killed that fine old State work, 
and let the dry ditch grow up to grass, he might 
have gone to the Legislature, but he contented him- 
self with defeating the Moffitt member who had 
voted for the job. If he opposed some measures 
for the general good, like high-schools and school 
libraries, it was because he lacked perspective, in 
his intense individualism, and suspected all expense 
of being spendthrift. He believed in good district 
schools, and he had a fondness, crude but genuine, 
for some kinds of reading—history and forensics of 
an elementary sort, 

With his good head for figures he doubted doctors 
and despised preachers; he thought lawyers were 
all rascals, but he respected them for their ability ; 
he was not himself litigious, but he enjoyed the in- 
tellectual encounters of a difficult lawsuit, and he 
often attended a sitting of the fall term of court, 
when he went to town, for the pleasure of hearing 
the speeches. He was a good citizen, and a good 
_husband. As a good father, he was rather severe 
with his children, and used to whip them, especially 
the gentle Conrad, who somehow crossed him most, 
till the twins died. After that he never struck any 
of them; and from the sight of a blow dealt a 
horse he turned as if sick. It was a long time be- 
fore he lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then 
the will of the man seemed to have been breached 
through his affections. THe let the girls do as they 
pleased—the twins had been girls; he let them go 
away to school, and got them a piano. It was they 
who made him sell the farm. If Conrad had only 
had their spirit he could have made him keep it, 
he felt; and he resented the want of support he 
might have found in a less yielding spirit than his 
son’s. 

His moral decay began with his perception of the 
opportunity of making money quickly and abun- 


89 


dantly, which offered itself to him after he sold hig 
farm. He awoke to it slowly, from a desolation in 
which he tasted the last bitter of homesickness, 
the utter misery of idleness and listlessness. When 
he broke down and cried for the hard-working, 
wholesome life he had lost, he was near the end of 
this season of despair, but he was also near the 
end of what was best in himself. He devolved upon 
a meaner ideal than that of conservative good citi- 
zenship, which had been his chief moral experience : 
the money he had already made without effort and 
without merit, bred its unholy self-love in him; he 
began to honor money, especially money that had 
been won suddenly and in large sums; for money 
that had been earned, painfully, slowly, and in little 
amounts, he had only pity and contempt. The poison 
of that ambition to go somewhere and be somebody 
which the local speculators had instilled into him, 
began to work in the vanity which had succeeded 
his somewhat scornful self-respect; he rejected Eu- 
rope as the proper field for his expansion ; he re- 
jected Washington ; he preferred New York, whith- 
er the men who have made money and do not yet 
know that money has made them, all instinctively 
turn. He came where he could watch his money 
breed more money, and bring greater increase of its 
kind in an hour of luck than the toil of a thousand 
men could earn in a year. He called it Speculation, 
stocks, the street; and his pride, his faith in him- 
self mounted with his luck. He expected, when he 
had sated his greed, to begin to spend, and he had 
formulated an intention to build a great house, to 
add another to the palaces of the country-bred mill_ 
lonaires who have come to adorn the great city, 
In the mean time he made little account of the 
things that occupied his children, except to fret at 
the ungrateful indifference of his son to the inter- 
ests that could alone make a man of him. He did 
not know whether his daughters were in society or 
not; with people coming and going in the house he 
would have supposed they must be so, no matter 
who the people were; in some vague way he felt 
that he had hired society in Mrs, Mandel, at so 
much a year. He never met a superior himself, 
except now and then a man of twenty or thirty 
millions to his one or two, and then he felt hig soul 
creep within him, without a sense of social inferior- 
ity; it was a question of financial inferiority ; and 
though Dryfoos’s soul bowed itself and crawled, it 
was with a gambler’s admiration of wonderful luck. 
Other men said these many-millioned millionaires 
were smart, and got their money by sharp practices 
to which lesser men could not attain; but Dryfoos 
believed that he could compass the same ends, by 
the same means, with the same chances; he respect- 
ed their money, not them. 

When he now heard Mrs. Mandel and his daugh- 
ters talking of that person, whoever she was, that 
Mrs. Mandel seemed to think had honored his girls 


90 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


by coming to see them, his curiosity was pricked as 
much as his pride was galled. 

“‘ Well, anyway,” said Mela, “I don’t care wheth- 
er Christine’s goun’ or not; Jam. And you got to 
go with me, Mrs. Mandel.” 

‘Well, there’s a little difficulty,” said Mrs. Man- 
del, with her unfailing dignity and politeness. “TI 
haven’t been asked, you know.” 

“Then what are we goun’ to do?” demanded 
Mela, almost crossly. She was physically too amia- 
ble, she felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite 
cross. “She might ’a’ knowed—well, known—we 
couldn’t ’a’? come alone, in New York. I don’t see 
why we couldn’t. I don’t call it much of an invita- 
tion !” 

“T suppose she thought you could come with 
your mother,” Mrs. Mandel suggested. 

“She didn’t say anything about mother. Did 
she, Christine? Or, yes, she did, too. And I told 
her she couldn’t git mother out. Don’t you remem- 
ber ?” 

“J didn’t pay much attention,” said Christine. 
“JT wasn’t certain we wanted to go.” 

“T reckon you wasn’t goun’ to let her see that 
we cared much,” said Mela, half reproachful, half 
proud of this attitude of Christine. ‘Well, I don’t 
see but what we got to stay at home.” She laughed 
at this lame conclusion of the matter. 

“Perhaps Mr. Conrad—you could very properly 
take him without an express invitation—” Mrs. 
Mandel began. 

Conrad looked up in alarm and protest. ‘“I—I 
don’t think I could go that evening—” 

‘““What’s the reason ?” his father broke in, harsh- 
ly. ‘ You’re not such a sheep that you’re afraid to 
go into company with your sisters? Or are you too 
good to go with them ?” 

“Tf it’s to be anything like that night when them 
hussies come out and danced that way,” said Mrs. 
Dryfoos, ‘I don’t blame Coonrod for not wantun’ 
to go. I never saw the beat of it.” 

Mela sent a yelling laugh across the table to her 
mother. ‘ Well, I wish Miss Vance could ’a’ heard 
that! Why, mother, did you think it was like the 
ballet ?” 

“Well, I didn’t know, Mely child,” said the old 
woman. ‘JI didn’t know what it was like. I hain’t 
never been to one, and you can’t be too keerful 
where you go, in a place like New York.” 

‘““What’s the reason you can’t go?” Dryfoos ig- 
nored the passage between his wife and daughter in 
making this demand of his son, with a sour face. 

“T have an engagement, that night—it’s one of 
our meetings—” 

“T reckon you can let your meeting go for one 
night,” said Dryfoos. “It can’t be so important, as 
all that, that you must disappoint your sisters.” 

“T don’t like to disappoint those poor creatures. 
They depend so much upon the meetings—” 


“T reckon they can stand it for one night,” said 
the old man. He added, “The poor ye have with 
you always.” | 

“That’s so, Coonrod,” said his mother. ‘‘It’s the 
Saviour’s own words.” 

“Yes, mother. But they’re not meant just as 
father used them.” 

“How do you know how they were meant? Or 
how I used them?” cried the father. ‘“‘Now you 
just make your plans to go with the girls, Tuesday 
night. They can’t go alone, and Mrs. Mandel can’t 
go with them.” 

“Pshaw!” said Mela. ‘We don’t want to take 
Conrad away from his meetun’, do we, Chris ?” 

“T don’t know,” said Christine, in her high, fine 
voice. “They could get along without him for one 
night, as father says.” 

“Well, I’m not a-goun’ to take him,” said Mela. 
“ Now, Mrs. Mandel, just think out some other way. 
Say! What’s the reason we couldn’t get somebody 
else to take us just as well? Ain’t that rulable?” 

“Tt would be allowable—”’ 

“ Allowable, I mean,” Mela corrected herself. 

“But it might look a little significant, unless it 
was some old family friend.” 

“Well, let’s get Mr. Fulkerson to take us. He’s 
the oldest family friend we got.” 

“T won’t go with Mr. Fulkerson,” said Christine, 
serenely. 

“Why, I’m sure, Christine,” her mother pleaded, 
“Mr. Fulkerson is a very good young man, and very 
nice appearun’.” 

Mela shouted, ‘‘He’s ten times as pleasant as 
that old Mr. Beaton of Christine’s !” 

Christine made no effort to break the constraint 
that fell upon the table at this sally, but her father 
said: “Christine is right, Mela. It wouldn’t do for 
you to go with any other young man. Conrad will 
go with you.” 

“I’m not certain I want to go, yet,” said Christine. 

“Well, settle that among yourselves. But if you 
want to go, your brother will go with you.” 

“Of course, Coonrod ’ll go, if his sisters wants 
him to,” the old woman pleaded. “I reckon it 
ain’t a-goun’ to be anything very bad; and if it is, 
why, he can just git right up and come out.” 

“Tt will be all right, mother. And I will go, of 
course.” 

“There, now, I knowed you would, Coonrod. 
Now, fawther!” This appeal was to make the old 
man say something in recognition of Conrad’s sacri- 
fice. 

“You'll always find,” he said, ‘‘ that it’s those of 
your own household that have the first claim on you.” 

““That’s so, Coonrod,” urged his mother. “It’s 
Bible truth. Your fawther ain’t a perfesser, but he 
always read his Bible. Search the Scriptures. 
That’s what it means.” 

“Laws! cried Mela, “a body can see, easy 


! ; 
’ 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


enough from mother, where Conrad’s wantun’ to be 
a preacher comes from. I should ’a’ thought she’d 
’a’ wanted to been one herself.” 

“Let your women keep silence in the churches,” 
said the old woman solemnly. 


91 


“There you go again, mother! I guess if you 
was to say that to some of the lady ministers 
nowadays, you’d git yourself into trouble.” Mela 
looked round for approval, and gurgled out a hoarse 
laugh. 


3 IX. 


Tue Dryfooses went late to Mrs. Horn’s muszcale 
in spite of Mrs. Mandel’s advice. Christine made 
the delay, both because she wished to show Miss 
Vance that she was not anxious, and because she 
had some vague notion of the distinction of arriy- 
ing late at any sort of entertainment. Mrs. Mandel 
insisted upon the difference between this musicale 
and an ordinary reception ; but Christine rather fan- 
cied disturbing a company that had got seated, and 
perhaps making people rise and stand, while she 
found her way to her place, as she had seen them 
do for a tardy comer at the theatre. 

Mela, whom she did not admit to her reasons or 
feelings always, followed her with the servile ad- 
miration she had for all that Christine did; and 
she took on trust as something successful the re- 
sult of Christine’s obstinacy, when they were allow- 
ed to stand against the wall at the back of the 
room through the whole of the long piece begun 
just before they came in. There had been no one 
to receive them; a few people, in the rear rows of 
chairs near them, turned their heads to glance at 
them, and then looked away again. Mela had her 
misgivings ; but at the end of the piece, Miss Vance 
came up to them at once, and then Mela knew that 
she had her eyes on them all the time, and that 
Christine must have been right. Christine said no- 
thing about their coming late, and so Mela did not 
make any excuse, and Miss Vance seemed to expect 
none. She glanced with a sort of surprise at Con- 
rad, when Christine introduced him; Mela did not 
know whether she liked their bringing him, till she 
shook hands\ with him, and said, “Oh, I am very 
glad, indeed! Mr. Dryfoos and I have met before.” 
Without explaining where or when, she led them to 
her aunt and presented them, and then said, “I’m 
going to put you with some friends of yours,” and 
quickly seated them next the Marches. Mela liked 
that well enough ; she thought she might have some 
joking with Mr. March, for all his wife was so stiff; 
but the look which Christine wore seemed to forbid, 
provisionally at least, any such relaxation. On her 
part, Christine was cool with the Marches. It went 
through her mind that they must have told Miss 
Vance they knew her; and perhaps they had boast- 
ed of her intimacy. She relaxed a little toward 
them when she saw Beaton leaning against the wall 
at the end of the row next Mrs. March. Then she 
conjectured that he might have told Miss Vance of 


her acquaintance with the Marches, and she bent 
forward and nodded to Mrs. March across Conrad, 
Mela, and Mr. March. She conceived of him as a 
sort of hand of her father’s, but she was willing to 
take them at their apparent social valuation for the 
time. She leaned back in her chair, and did not 
look up at Beaton, after the first furtive glance, 
though she felt his eyes on her. 

The music began again almost at once, before 
Mela had time to make Conrad tell her where Miss 
Vance had met him before. She would not have 
minded interrupting the music; but every one else 
seemed so attentive, even Christine, that she had not 
the courage. 

The concert went on to an end without realizing 
for her the ideal of pleasure which one ought to 
find in society. She was not exacting, but it seemed 
to her there were very few young men, and when 
the music was over, and their opportunity came to 
be sociable, they were not very sociable. They were 
not introduced, for one thing; but it appeared to 
Mela that they might have got introduced, if they 
had any sense; she saw them looking at her, and 
she was glad she had dressed so much; she was 
dressed more than any other lady there, and either 
because she was the most dressed of any person 
there, or because it had got around who her father 
was, she felt that she had made an impression 
on the young men. In her satisfaction with this, 
and from her good-nature, she was contented to be 
served with her refreshments after the concert by 
Mr. March, and to remain joking with him. She 
was at her ease; she let her hoarse voice out in 
her largest laugh; she accused him, to the admira- 
tion of those near, of getting her into a. perfect 
gale. It appeared to her, in her own pleasure, her 
mission to illustrate to the rather subdued people 
about her what a good time really was, so that 
they could have it if they wanted it. Her joy was 
crowned when March modestly professed himself 
unworthy to monopolize her, and explained how sel- 
fish he felt in talking to a young lady when there 
were So many young men dying to do so. 

“Oh, pshaw, dyun’, yes!” cried Mela, tasting the 
irony. ‘“‘I guess I see them!” 

He asked if he might really introduce a friend 
of his to her, and she said, Well, yes, if he thought 
he could live to get to her; and March brought 
up a man whom he thought very young and Mela 


92 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


thought very old. He was a contributor to Avery 
Other Week, and so March knew him; he believed 
himself a student of human nature in behalf of lit- 
erature, and he now set about studying Mela. He 
tempted her to express her opinion on all points, 
and he laughed so amiably at the boldness and hu- 
morous vigor of her ideas that she was delighted 
with him. She asked him if he was a New-Yorker 
by birth; and she told him she pitied him, when he 
said he had never been West. She professed her- 
self perfectly sick of New York, and urged him to 
go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town. 
He wondered if it would do to put her into litera- 
ture just as she was, with all her slang and brag, 
but he decided that he would have to subdue her a 
great deal: he did not see how he could reconcile 
the facts of her conversation with the facts of her 
appearance: her beauty, her splendor of dress, her 
apparent right to be where she was. These things 
perplexed him; he was afraid the great American 
novel, if true, must be incredible. Mela said he 
ought to hear her sister go on about New York when 
they first came; but she reckoned that Christine 
was getting so she could put up with it a little 
better, now. She looked significantly across the 
room to the place where Christine was talking with 
Beaton; and the student of human nature asked, 
Was she here? and, Would she introduce him ? 
Mela said she would, the first chance she got; and 
. she added, They would be much pleased to have him 
call. She felt herself to be haying a beautiful time, 
and she got directly upon such intimate terms with 
the student of human nature that she laughed with 
him about some peculiarities of his, such as his go- 
ing so far about to ask things he wanted to know 
from her; she said she never did believe in beat- 
ing about the bush much. She had noticed the 
same thing in Miss Vance when she came to call, 
that day; and when the young man owned that he 
came rather a good deal to Mrs. Horn’s house, she 
asked him, Well, what sort of a girl was Miss 
Vance, anyway, and where did he suppose she had 
met her brother? The student of human nature 
could not say as to this, and as to Miss Vance he 
judged it safest to treat of the non-society side of 
her character, her activity in charity, her special 
devotion to the work among the poor on the East 
Side, which she personally engaged in. 

“Oh, that’s where Conrad goes, too!”” Mela inter- 
rupted. “Ill bet anything that’s where she met 
him. I wisht Leould tell Christine! But I suppose 
she would want to kill me, if I was to speak to 
her now.” 

The student of human nature said politely, “ Oh, 
shall I take you to her?” 

Mela answered, “I guess you better not /” with a 
laugh so significant that he could not help his in- 
ferences concerning both Christine’s absorption in 
the person she was talking with, and the habitual 


violence of her temper. He made note of how Mela 
helplessly spoke of all her family by their names, 
as if he were already intimate with them; he fancied 
that if he could get that in skilfully, it would be a 
valuable color in his study; the English lord whom 
she should astonish with it, began to form himself 


out of the dramatic nebulosity in his mind, and to 


whirl on a definite orbit in American society. But 
he was puzzled to decide whether Mela’s willingness 
to take him into her confidence on short notice was 
typical or personal: the trait of a daughter of the 
natural gas millionaire, or a foible of her own. 

Beaton talked with Christine the greater part of 
the evening that was left after the concert. He 
was very grave, and took the tone of a fatherly 
friend; he spoke guardedly of the people present, 
and moderated the severity of some of Christine’s 
judgments of their looks and costumes. He did 
this out of a sort of unreasoned allegiance to Mar- 
garet, whom he was in the mood of wishing to please 
by being very kind and good, as she always was. 
He had the sense also of atoning by this behavior 
for some reckless things he had said before that to 
Christine; he put on a sad, reproving air with her, 
and gave her the feeling of being held in check. 

She chafed at it, and said, glancing at Margaret 
in talk with her brother, “I don’t think Miss Vance 
is so very pretty, do you ?” 

“‘T never think whether she’s pretty or not,” said 
Beaton, with dreamy affectation. “She is merely 
perfect. Does she know your brother ?” 

““So she says. I didn’t suppose Conrad ever went 
anywhere, except to tenement-houses.” 

“Tt might have been there,” Beaton suggested. 
‘“‘She goes among friendless people everywhere.” 

‘‘Maybe that’s the reason she came to see us /” 
said Christine. 

Beaton looked at her with his smouldering eyes, 
and felt the wish to say, “ Yes, it was exactly that,” 
but he only allowed himself to deny the possibility 
of any such motive in that case. He added, “I am 
so glad you know her, Miss Dryfoos. I never met 
Miss Vance without feeling myself better and truer, 
somehow; or the wish to be so.” 

‘And you think we might .be improved too?” 
Christine retorted. ‘Well, I must say you’re not 
very flattering, Mr. Beaton, anyway.” 

Beaton would have liked to answer her according 
to her cattishness, with a good clawing sarcasm that 
would leave its smart in her pride; but he was be- 
ing good, and he could not change all at once. Be- 
sides, the girl’s attitude under the social honor done 
her interested him. He was sure she had never 
been in such good company before, but he could see 
that she was not in the least affected by the ex- 
perience. He had told her who this person and 
that was; and he saw she had understood that the 
names were of consequence; but she seemed to feel 
her equality with them all. Her serenity was not 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


obviously akin to the savage stoicism in which Bea- 
ton hid his own consciousness of social inferiority ; 
but having won his way in the world so far by his 
talent, his personal quality, he did not conceive the 
simple fact in her case. Christine was self-pos- 
sessed because she felt that a knowledge of her 
father’s fortune had got around, and she had the 
peace which money gives to ignorance; but Beaton 
attributed her poise to ignorance of social values. 
This, while he inwardly sneered at it, avenged him 
upon his own too keen sense of them, and, together 
with his temporary allegiance to Margaret’s good- 
ness, kept him from retaliating Christine’s vulgarity. 
He said, “I don’t see how that could be,” and left 
the question of flattery to settle itself. 

The people began to go away, following each oth- 
er up to take leave of Mrs. Horn. Christine watch. 
ed them with indifference, and either because she 
would not be governed by the general movement, 
or because she liked being with Beaton, gave no 
' sign of going. Mela was still talking to the student 
of human nature, sending out her laugh in deep 
‘ gurgles amidst the unimaginable confidences she 

was making him about herself, her family, the staff 
of Hvery Other Week, Mrs. Mandel, and the kind of 
life they had all led before she came to them. He 
was not a blind devotee of art for art’s sake, and 
though he felt that if one could portray Mela just 
as she was she would be the richest possible ma- 
terial, he was rather ashamed to know scme of the 
things she told him; and he kept looking anxiously 
about for a chance of escape. The company had 
reduced itself to the Dryfoos groups and some 
friends of Mrs. Horn’s who had the right to linger, 
when Margaret crossed the room with Conrad to 
Christine and Beaton. 
“Tm so glad, Miss Dryfoos, to find that I was 
.not quite a stranger to you all when I ventured to 
call, the other day. Your brother and I are rather 
old acquaintances, though I never knew his name 
before. I don’t know just how to say we met where 
he is valued somuch, I suppose I mustn’t try to say 
how much,” she added with a look of deep regard 
at him, 

Conrad blushed and stood folding his arms tight 
over his breast, while his sister received Margaret’s 
confession with the suspicion which was her first 
feeling in regard to any new thing. What she 
concluded was that this girl was trying to get in with 
them, for reasons of her own. She said: “Yes; it’s 
the first J ever heard of his knowing you. He’s so 
much taken up with his meetings, he didn’t want to 
come to-night.” 

Margaret drew in her lip before she answered, 
without apparent resentment of the awkwardness or 
ungraciousness, whichever she found it, “I don’t 
wonder! You become so absorbed in such work 
that you think nothing else is worth while. But 
Ym glad Mr. Dryfoos could come with you; I’m so 


93 


glad you could all come; I knew you would enjoy the 
music. Do sit down—” 

“No,” said Christine bluntly, “we must be going. 
Mela !” she called out, “Come!” 

The last group about Mrs. Horn looked round, but 
Christine advanced upon them undismayed, and took 
the hand Mrs. Horn promptly gave her. ‘“ Well, I 
must bid you good-night.” 

‘Oh, good-night,” murmured the elder lady. 
‘So very kind of you to come.” 

“ve had the best kind of a time,” said Mela 
cordially. “TI hain’t laughed so much, I don’t know 
when.” 

“Oh, I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ said Mrs. Horn in 
the same polite murmur she had used with Chris- 
tine; but she said nothing to either sister about 
any future meeting. 

They were apparently not troubled. Mela said 
over her shoulder to the student of human nature, 
“The next time I see you I'll give it to you for what 
you said about Moffitt.” 

Margaret made some entreating paces after them, 
but she did not succeed in covering the retreat of 
the sisters against critical conjecture. She could 
only say to Conrad, as if recurring to the subject, 
““T hope we can get our friends to play for us some 
night. I know it isn’t any real help, but such 
things take the poor creatures out of themselves 
for the time being, don’t you think ?” 

“Oh, yes,” he answered. ‘“They’re good in that 
way.” He turned back hesitatingly to Mrs. Horn, 
and said, with a blush, “TI thank you for a happy 
evening.” 

‘Oh, I am very glad,” she replied in her murmur. 

One of the old friends of the house arched her 
eyebrows in saying good-night, and offered the two 
young men remaining seats home in her carriage. 
Beaton gloomily refused, and she kept herself from 
asking the student of human nature, till she had 
got him into her carriage, ‘What zs Moffitt, and 
what did you say about it 2” 


“Now you see, Margaret,” said Mrs. Horn, with 
bated triumph, when the people were all gone. 

“Yes, I see,” the girl consented. “From one 
point of view, of course it’s been a failure. I don’t 
think we’ve given Miss Dryfoos a pleasure, but per- 
haps nobody could. And at least we’ve given her 
the opportunity of enjoying herself,” 

“Such people,” said Mrs. Horn, philosophically, 
‘people with their money, must of course be re- 
ceived sooner or later. You can’t keep them out. 
Only, I believe I would rather let some one else be- 
gin with them. The Leightons didn’t come ?” 

“I sent them cards. I couldn't call again.” 

Mrs. Horn sighed a little. “I suppose Mr. Dry. 
foos is one of your fellow-philanthropists 2” 

“He’s one of the workers,” said Margaret, “I 
met him several times at the Hall, but I only knew 


94 


his first name. I think he’s a great friend of Fa- 
ther Benedict; he seems devoted to the work. Don’t 
you think he looks good?” 

“Very,” said Mrs. Horn, with a color of censure 
in her assent. ‘The younger girl seemed more 
amiable than her sister. But what manners!” 

“Dreadful!” said Margaret, with knit brows, and 
a pursed mouth of humorous suffering. “But she 
appeared to feel very much at home.” 

“Oh, as to that, neither of them was much abash- 
ed. Do you suppose Mr. Beaton gave the other one 
some hints for that quaint dress of hers? I don’t 
imagine that black and lace is her own invention. 
She seems to have some sort of strange fascination 
for him.” 

““She’s very picturesque,” Margaret explained. 
“ And artists see points in people that the rest of 
us don’t.” 

“Could it be her money ?” Mrs. Horn insinuated, 
“He must be very poor.” 

“But he isn’t base,” retorted the girl with a gen- 
erous indignation that made her aunt smile. 

“Oh, no; but if he fancies her so picturesque, it 
doesn’t follow that he would object to her being 
rich.” 

“Tt would with a man like Mr. Beaton!” 

“You are an idealist, Margaret. I suppose your 
Mr. March has some disinterested motive in paying 
court to Miss Mela—Pamela, I suppose is her name. 
He talked to her longer than her literature would 
have lasted.” 

‘He seems a very kind person,” said Margaret. 

‘And Mr. Dryfoos pays his salary ?” 

“T don’t know anything about that. 
wouldn’t make any difference with him.” 

Mrs. Horn laughed out at this security; but she 
was not displeased by the nobleness which it came 
from. She liked Margaret to be high-minded, and 
was really not distressed by any good that wasin her. 


But that 


.The Marches walked home, both because it was 
not far, and because they must spare in carriage 
hire at any rate. As soon as they were out of the 
house, she applied a point of conscience to him. 

“T don’t see how you could talk to that girl so 
long, Basil, and make her laugh so.” 

“Why, there seemed no one else to do it, till I 
thought of Kendricks.” 

“Yes, but I kept thinking, Now he’s pleasant to 
her because he thinks it’s to his interest. If she 
had no relation to Every Other Week, he wouldn't 
waste his time on her.” : 

“‘Tsabel,” March complained, “I wish you wouldn’t 
think of me in he, him, and his: I never personalize 
you in my thoughts: you remain always a vague 
unindividualized essence, not quite without form and 
void, but nounless and pronounless. I call that a 
much more beautiful mental attitude toward the 
object of one’s affections. But if you must he and 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you’d have 
more kindly thoughts of me.” 

“Do you deny that it’s true, Basil ?” 

‘Do you believe that it’s true, Isabel ?” 

“No matter. But could you excuse it if it were 9” 

“Ah, I see you’d have been capable of it in my 
place, and you’re ashamed.” 

“Yes,” sighed the wife, “I’m afraid that I should. 
But tell me that you wouldn’t, Basil !” 

“T can tell you that I wasn’t. But I suppose that 
in a real exigency, I could truckle to the proprie- 
tary Dryfooses as well as you.” 

“Oh, no; you mustn’t, dear! I’m a woman, and 
I'm dreadfully afraid. But you must always be a 
man, especially with that horrid old Mr. Dryfoos. 
Promise me that you’ll never yield the least point 
to him in a matter of right and wrong!” 

“Not, if he’s right and I’m wrong ?” 

“Don’t trifle, dear! You know what I mean. 
Will you promise ?” 

“Pll promise to submit the point to you, and let 
you do the yielding. As for me I shall be ada- 
mant. Nothing I like better.” 

“ They’re dreadful, even that poor, good young fel- 
low, who’s so different from all the rest; he’s 
awful, too, because you feel that he’s a martyr to. 
them.” 

“And I never did like martyrs a great deal,” 
March interposed. 

“J wonder how they came to be there,” Mrs. March 
pursued, unmindful of his joke. 

“That is exactly what seemed to be puzzling 
Miss Mela about us. She asked, and I explained 
as well as I could; and then she told me that Miss 
Vance had come to call on them and invited them; 
and first they didn’t know how they could come 
till they thought of making Conrad bring them. But 
she didn’t say why Miss Vance called on them. Mr. 
Dryfoos doesn’t employ her on Every Other Week. 
But I suppose she has her own vile little motive.” 

“Tt can’t be their money ; it can’t be!” sighed 
Mrs. March. 

‘Well, I don’t know. We all respect money.” 

“Yes, but Miss Vance’s position is so secure. 
She needn’t pay court to those stupid, vulgar peo- 
ple.” 

“Well, let’s console ourselves with the belief that 
she would, if she needed. Such people as the Dry- 
fooses are the raw material of good society. It 
isn’t made up of refined or meritorious people— 
professors and littérateurs, ministers and musicians, 
and their families, All the fashionable people there 
to-night were like the Dryfooses a generation or two. 
ago. I dare say the material works up faster now, 
and in a season or two you won’t know the Dry- 
fooses from the other plutocrats. They will—a lit- 
tle better than they do now; they’ll see a difference, 
but nothing radical, nothing painful. People who 
get up in the world by service to others—through 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


letters, or art, or science—may have their modest 
little misgivings as to their social value, but people 
that rise by money—especially if their gains are 
sudden—never have. And that’s the kind of peo- 
ple that form our nobility ; there’s no use pretend- 
ing that we haven’t a nobility; we might as well 
pretend we haven’t first-class cars in the presence 
of a vestibuled Pullman. Those girls had no more 
doubt of their right to be there than if they had 
been duchesses : we thought it was very nice of Miss 
Vance to come and ask us, but they didn’t; they 
weren’t afraid, or the least embarrassed ; they were 
perfectly natural—like born aristocrats. And you 
may be sure that if the plutocracy that now owns 
the country ever sees fit to take on the outward 
signs of an aristocracy—titles, and arms, and ances- 
tors—it won’t falter from any inherent question of 
its worth. Money prizes and honors itself, and if 


there is anything it hasn’t got, it believes it can 


buy it.” | 

“Well, Basil,” said his wife, “I hope you won’t 
get infected with Lindau’s ideals of rich people. 
Some of them are very good and kind.” 

“Who denies that? Not even Lindau himself. 
It’s all right. And the great thing is that the 
evening’s enjoyment is over. I’ve got my society 
smile off, and I'm radiantly happy. Go on with 
your little pessimistic diatribes, Isabel; you can’t 
spoil my pleasure.”’ 


‘IT could see,” said Mela, as she and Christine 
drove home together, ‘that she was as jealous as 
she could be, all the time you was talkun’ to Mr. 
Beaton. She pretended to be talkun’ to Conrad, 
but she kep’ her eye on you pretty close, I can tell 
you. I bet she just got us there to see how him 
and you would act together. And I reckon she 
was satisfied. He’s dead gone on you, Chris.” 

Christine listened with a dreamy pleasure 10 the 
flatteries with which Mela plied her in the hope of 
some return in kind, and not at all because she felt 
spitefully toward Miss Vance, or in anywise wished 
her ill. ‘Who was that fellow with you, so long ?” 
asked Christine. ‘I suppose you turned yourself 
inside out to him, like you always do.” 


95 


Mela was transported by the cruel ingratitude. 
“It’s a lie! I didn’t tell him a single thing.” 


Conrad walked home, choosing to do so because 
he did not wish to hear his sisters’ talk of the even- 
ing, and because there was a tumult in his spirit 
which he wished to let have its way. In his life 
with its single purpose, defeated by stronger wills 
than his own, and now struggling partially to fulfil 
itself in acts of devotion to others, the thought of 
women had entered scarcely more than in that of a 
child. His ideals were of a virginal vagueness: 
faces, voices, gestures had filled his fancy at times, 
but almost passionlessly; and the sensation that he 
now indulged was a kind of worship, ardent, but 
reverent and exalted. The brutal experiences of 
the world make us forget that there are such na- 
tures in it, and that they seem to come up out of 
the lowly earth as well as down from the high 
heaven. In the heart of this man well on toward 
thirty there had never been left the stain of a base 
thought; not that suggestion and conjecture had 
not visited him, but that he had not entertained 
them, or in anywise made them his. In a Catholic 
age and country, he would have been one of those 
monks who are sainted after death for the angelic 
purity of their lives, and whose names are invoked 
by believers in moments of trial, like San Luigi Gon- 
zaga. As he now walked along thinking, with a 
lover’s beatified smile on his face, of how Margaret 
Vance had spoken and looked, he dramatized scenes 
in which he approved himself to her by acts of 
goodness and unselfishness, and died to please her 
for the sake of others. He made her praise him 
for them, to his face, when he disclaimed their merit, 
and after his death, when he could not. All the 
time he was poignantly sensible of her grace, her 
elegance, her style; they seemed to intoxicate him; 
some tones of her voice thrilled through his nerves, 
and some looks turned his brain with a delicious, 
swooning sense of her beauty; her refinement be- 
wildered him. But all this did not admit the idea 
of possession, even of aspiration. At the most his 
worship only set her beyond the love of all other 
men as far as beyond his own. 


96 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Part Fourth. 


I; 


Nor long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dryfoos 
one day his scheme for a dinner in celebration of 
the success of Hvery Other Week. Dryfoos had nev- 
er meddled in any manner with the conduct of the 
periodical ; but Fulkerson easily saw that he was 
proud of his relation to it, and he proceeded upon 
the theory that he would be willing to have this 
relation known. On the days when he had been 
lucky in stocks, he was apt to drop in at the office 
on Eleventh Street, on his way uptown, and listen 
to Fulkerson’s talk. He was on good enough terms 
with March, who revised his first impressions of the 
man, but they had not much to say to each other, 
and it seemed to March that Dryfoos was even a 
little afraid of him, as of a piece of mechanism he 
had acquired, but did not quite understand ; he left 
the working of it to Fulkerson, who no doubt bragged 
of it sufficiently. The old man seemed to have as 
little to say to his son; he shut himself up with 
Fulkerson, where the others could hear the manager 
begin and go on with an unstinted flow of talk 
about Hvery Other Week ; Fulkerson never talked 
of anything else if he could help it, and was always 
bripging the conversation back to it if it strayed. 

The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and call. 
ed from his door, “ March, I say, come down here a 
minute, will you? Conrad, I want you, too.” 

The editor and the publisher found the manager 
and the proprietor seated on opposite sides of the 
table. “It’s about those funeral baked meats, you 
know,” Fulkerson explained, “and I was trying to 
give Mr. Dryfoos some idea of what we wanted to 
do. That is, what I wanted to do,” he continued, 
turning from March to Dryfoos. « March, here, is 
- opposed to it, of course. He'd like to publish Huery 
Other Week on the sly ; keep it out of the papers, and 
off the news stands; he’s a modest Boston petunia, 
and he shrinks from publicity; but I am not that 
kind of herb, myself, and I want all the publicity we 
can get—beg, borrow, or steal—for this thing. I say 
that you can’t work the sacred rites of hospitality 
in a better cause, and what I propose is a little 
dinner for the purpose of recognizing the hit we’ve 
made with this thing. My idea was to strike you 
for the necessary funds, and do the thing on a hand. 
some scale. The term little dinner is a mere figure 
of speech. A little dinner wouldn’t make a big talk, 
and what we want is the big talk, at present, if we 
don’t lay up a cent. My notion was that pretty soon 
after Lent, now, when everybody is feeling just 
right, we should begin to send out our paragraphs, 
affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along 
about the first of May, we should sit down about a 


hundred strong, the most distinguished people in the 
country, and solemnize our triumph. There it is, in 
a nutshell. I might expand and I might expound, 
but that’s the sum and substance of it.” 

Fulkerson stopped, and ran his eyes eagerly over 
the faces of his three listeners, one after the other. 
March was a little surprised when Dryfoos turned to 
him, but that reference of the question seemed to 
give Fulkerson particular pleasure: ‘What do you 
think, Mr. March 2?” 

The editor leaned back in his chair. “I don’t 
pretend to have Mr. Fulkerson’s genius for adver- 
tising; but it seems to me a little early, yet. We 
might celebrate later when we’ve got more to cele- 
brate. At present we’re a pleasing novelty rather 
than a fixed fact.” 

“Ah, you don’t get the idea!” said Fulkerson. 
“What we want to do with this dinner is to fix 
the fact.” 

“Am I going to come in anywhere ?” the old man 
interrupted. 

“You're going to come in at the head of the pro- 
cession! We are going to strike everything that 
is imaginative and romantic in the newspaper soul 
with you and your history and your fancy for going 
in for this thing. I can start you in a paragraph 
that will travel through all the newspapers, from 
Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida. We 
have had all sorts of rich men backing up literary 
enterprises, but the natural-gas man in literature 
is a new thing, and the combination of your pictu- 
resque past and your esthetic present is something 
that will knock out the sympathies of the Ameri- 
can public the first round. I feel,” said Fulkerson, 
with a tremor of pathos in his voice, “that Hvery 
Other Week is at a disadvantage before the public 
as long as it’s supposed to be my enterprise, my 
idea. As far as I’m known at all, ’m known sim- 
ply as a syndicate man, and nobody in the press 
believes that I’ve got the money to run the thing on 
a grand scale; a suspicion of insolvency must attach 
to it sooner or later, and the fellows on the press 
will work up that impression, sooner or later, if we 
don’t give them something else to work up. Now, 
as soon as I begin to give it away to the corre. 
spondents that yow’re in it, with your untold mill- 
ions—that in fact it was your idea from the start, 
that you originated it to give full play to the hu- 
manitarian tendencies of Conrad here, who’s always 
had these theories of co-operation, and longed to 
realize them for the benefit of our struggling young 
writers and artists—” 

March had listened with growing amusement to 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


the mingled burlesque and earnest of Fulkerson’s 
self-sacrificing impudence, and with wonder as to 
how far Dryfoos was consenting to his preposterous 
proposition, when Conrad broke out, “‘ Mr. Fulker- 
son, I could not allow you to do that. It would not 
‘be true; I did not wish to be here; and—and what 
I think—what I wish to do—that is something I 
will not let any one put me in a false position about. 
No!” The blood rushed into the young man’s 
gentle face, and he met his father’s glance with de- 
‘fiance. 

Dryfoos turned from him to Fulkerson, without 
speaking, and Fulkerson said, caressingly, ‘“‘ Why, 
‘of course, Coonrod! I know how you feel, and I 
shouldn’t let anything of that sort go out uncontra- 
dicted afterwards. But there isn’t anything in these 
‘times that would give us better standing with the 
public than some hint of the way you feel about 
such things. The public expects to be interested, 
and nothing would interest it more than to be told 
that the success of Hvery Other Week sprang from 
the first application of the principle of Live and 
let Live to a literary enterprise. It would look 
particularly well, coming from you and your father, 
but if you object, we can leave that part out; 
though if you approve of the principle I don’t see 
why you need object. The main thing is to let the 
public know that it owes this thing to the liberal 
and enlightened spirit of one of the foremost capi- 
talists of the country, and that his purposes are not 
likely to be betrayed in the hands of his son. I 
should get a little cut made from a photograph of 
your father, and supply it gratis with the para- 
‘graphs.” 

“TI guess,” said the old man, “ we will get along 
without the cut.” 

Fulkerson laughed. “ Well, well! Have it your 
-own way. But the sight of your face in the patent 
outsides of the country press, would be worth half 
‘a dozen subscribers in every school district through- 
‘out the length and breadth of this fair land.” 

‘There was a fellow,” Dryfoos explained in an 
aside to March, “that was getting up a history of 
Moffitt, and he asked me to let him put a steel en- 
‘graving of me in. He said a good many prominent 
citizens were going to have theirs in, and his price 
was a hundred and fifty dollars. I told him I 
-couldn’t let mine go for less than two hundred, and 
when he said he could give me a splendid plate for 
that money, I said I should want it cash. You 
never saw a fellow more astonished when he got it 
through him that I expected him to pay the two hun- 
dred.” 

Fulkerson laughed in keen appreciation of the 
joke. “ Well, sir, I guess Avery Other Week will pay 
you that much. But if you won’t sell at any price, 
all right; we must try to worry along without the 
light of your countenance on the posters, but we got 
‘to have it for the banquet.” 


7 


94 


“T don’t seem to feel very hungry, yet,” said the 
old man, dryly. 

“Oh, Pappétet vient en mangeant, as our French 
friends say. You'll be hungry enough when you 
See the preliminary Little Neck clam. It’s too late 
for oysters.” 

‘Doesn’t that fact seem to point to a post- 
ponement till they get back, some time in October ?” 
March suggested. 

‘No, no!” said Fulkerson, “‘ you don’t catch on to 
the business end of this thing, my friends. You’re 
proceeding on something like the old exploded idea 
that the demand creates the supply, when everybody 
knows, if he’s watched the course of modern events, 
that it’s just as apt to bé the other way. I contend 
that we’ve got a real, substantial success to celebrate 
now; but even if we hadn’t, the celebration would 
do more than anything else to create the success, if 
we got it properly before the public. People will 
say, Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn’t go 
and rejoice over their magazine unless they had got 
a big thing in it. And the state of feeling we 
should produce in the public mind would make a 
boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for Z. 
O. W. Heigh ?” 

He looked sunnily from one to the other in suc- 
cession. The elder Dryfoos said, with his chin on 
the top of his stick, ‘I reckon those Little Neck 
clams will keep.” 

“Well, just as you say,” Fulkerson cheerfully as- 
sented. ‘I understand you to agree to the general 
principle of a little dinner ?” 

‘‘The smaller the better,” said the old man. 

“Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of 
that seems to cover the case, even if we vary the 
plan a little. I had thought of a reception, maybe, 
that would include the lady contributors and artists, 
and the wives and daughters of the other contribu- 
tors. That would give us the chance to ring in a 
lot of society correspondents and get the thing 
written up in first-class shape. By-the-way /”” cried 
Fulkerson, slapping himself on the leg, “ why not 
have the dinner and the reception both ?” 

“‘T don’t understand,” said Dryfoos. 

‘‘ Why, have a select little dinner for ten or twenty 
choice spirits of the male persuasion, and then about 
ten o’clock, throw open your palatial drawing-rooms 
and admit the females to champagne, salads, and 
ices. It is the very thing! Come!” 

“What do you think of it, Mr. March ?” asked 
Dryfoos, on whose social. inexperience Fulkerson’s 
words projected no very intelligible image, and who 
perhaps hoped for some more light. 

“Tt’s a beautiful vision,” said March, “and if it 
will take more time to realize it I think I approve. 
I approve of anything that will delay Mr. Fulkerson’s 
advertising orgy.” 

“Then,” Fulkerson pursued, “we could have the 
pleasure of Miss Christine and Miss Mela’s com- 


98 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


pany; and maybe Mrs. Dryfoos would look in on us 
in the course of the evening. There’s no hurry, 
as Mr. March suggests, if we can give the thing this 
shape. I will cheerfully adopt the idea of my hon- 
orable colleague.” 

March laughed at his impudence, but at heart he 
was ashamed of Fulkerson for proposing to make 
use of Dryfoos and his house in that way. He fan- 
cied something appealing in the look that the old 
man turned on him, and something indignant in 
Conrad’s flush; but probably this was only his fan- 
cy. He reflected that neither of them could feel it 
as people of more worldly knowledge would, and he 
consoled himself with the fact that Fulkerson fas 
really not such a charlatan as he seemed. But it 
went through his mind that this was a strange end 
for all Dryfoos’s money-making to come to; and he 
philosophically accepted the fact of his own hum- 
ble fortunes when he reflected how little his money 
could buy for such a man. It was an honorable 
use that Fulkerson was putting it to in Hvery Other 
Week ; it might be far more creditably spent on 
such an enterprise than on horses, or wines, or wo- 
men, the usual resources of the brute rich; and if 
it were to be lost, it might better be lost that way 
than in stocks. He kept a smiling face turned to 
Dryfoos while these irreverent considerations occu- 
pied him, and hardened his heart against father and 
son and their possible emotions. 

The old man rose to put an end to the interview. 
He only repeated, “I guess those clams will keep 
till fall.” 

But Fulkerson was apparently satisfied with the 
progress he had made; and when he joined March 
for the stroll homeward after office hours, he was 
able to detach his mind from the subject, as if con- 
tent to leave it. 

“This is about the best part of the year in New 
York,” he said. In some of the areas the grass 
had sprouted, and the tender young foliage had 
loosened itself from the buds on a sidewalk tree 
here and there; the soft air was full of spring, and 
the delicate sky, far aloof, had the look it never 
wears at any other season. ‘It ain’t a time of year 
to complain much of, anywhere; but I don’t want 
anything better than the month of May in New 
York. Farther South it’s too hot, and I’ve been in 
Boston in May when that east wind of yours made 
every nerve in my body get up and howl. I reckon 
the weather has a good deal to do with the local 
temperament. The reason a New York man takes 
life so easily with all his rush is that his climate 
don’t worry him. Buta Boston man must be rasped 
the whole while by the edge in his air. That ac- 
counts for his sharpness; and when he’s lived 
through twenty-five or thirty Boston Mays, he gets 
to thinking that Providence has some particular use 
for him, or he wouldn’t have survived, and that 
makes him conceited. See?” 


“T see,” said March. “But I don’t know how 
you’re going to work that idea into an advertise- 
ment, exactly.” 

“Oh, pshaw, now, March! You don’t think I’ve 
got that on the brain all the time ?” 

“You were gradually leading up to Hvery Other 
Week, somehow.” 

“No, sir; I wasn’t. I was just thinking what a 
different creature a Massachusetts man was from 
a Virginian, And yet I suppose they’re both as 
pure English stock as you’ll get anywhere in Amer-. 
ica. March, I think Colonel Woodburn’s paper is. 
going to make a hit.” 

“You've got there! When it knocks down the 
sale about one-half, I shall know it’s made a hit.” 

“Ym not afraid,” said Fulkerson. “That thing 
is going to attract attention. It’s well written—you 
can take the pomposity out of it, here and there— 
and it’s novel. Our people like a bold strike, and 
it’s going to shake them up tremendously fo have: 
serfdom advocated on high moral grounds as the 
only solution of the labor problem. You see in the 
first place he goes for their sympathies by the way 
he portrays the actual relations of capital and labor ; 
he shows how things have got to go from bad to 
worse, and then he trots out his little old hobby,. 
and proves that if slavery had not been interfered 
with, it would have perfected itself in the interest 
of humanity. He makes a pretty strong plea for 
ta 

March threw back his head and laughed. “ He’s. 
converted you! I swear, Fulkerson, if we had ac- 
cepted and paid for an article advocating cannibal- 
ism as the only resource for getting rid of the su- 
perfluous poor, you’d begin to believe in it.” 

Fulkerson smiled in approval of the joke, and 
only said, “I wish you could meet the Colonel in the 
privacy of the domestic circle, March. You’d like 
him. He’s a splendid old fellow; regular type. 
Talk about spring! You ought to see the widow’s. 
little back yard, these days. You know that glass 
gallery just beyond the dining-room? Those girls. 
have got the pot plants out of that, and a lot more, 
and they’ve turned the edges of that back yard, 
along the fence, into a regular bower; they’ve got. 
sweet-peas planted, and nasturtiums, and we shall 
be in a blaze of glory about the beginning of June. 
Fun to see ’em work in the garden, and the bird 
bossing the job in his cage under the cherry-tree.. 
Have to keep the middle of the yard for the clothes- 
line, but six days in the week, it’s a lawn, and I go. 
over it with a mower myself. March, there ain’t 
anything like a home, zs there? Dear little cot of 
your own, heigh? I tell you, March, when I get to 
pushing that mower round, and the Colonel is smok- 
ing his cigar in the gallery, and those girls are pot- 
tering over the flowers, one of these soft evenings 
after dinner, I feel like a human being. Yes, I do. 
I struck it rich when I concluded to take my meals. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 99 


at the widow’s. For eight dollars a week I get good 
board, refined society, and all the advantages of a 
Christian home. By-the-way, you’ve never had much 
talk with Miss Woodburn, have you, March 2” 

“Not so much as with Miss Woodburn’s fa- 
ther.” 

‘Well, he zs rather apt to scoop the conversation. 
I must draw his fire, some time, when you and Mrs. 
March are around, and get you’a chance with Miss 
Woodburn.” 

“T should like that better, I believe,” said March. 

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder if you did. Curious, 
but Miss Woodburn isn’t at all your idea of a 
Southern girl. She’s got lots of go; she’s never idle 
a minute; she keeps the old gentleman in first-class 
shape, and she don’t believe a bit in the slavery 
solution of the labor problem; says she’s glad it’s 
gone, and if it was anything like the effects of it, 
she’s glad it went before her time. No, sir, she’s 
as full of snap‘as the liveliest kind of a Northern 
girl. None of that sunny Southern languor you 
read about.” 

“I suppose the typical Southerner, like the typ- 
ical anything else, is pretty difficult to find,” said 
March. “But perhaps Miss Woodburn represents 
the new South. The modern conditions must be 
producing a modern type.” 

“Well, that’s what she and the Colonel both Say. 
They say there ain’t anything left of that Walter 
Scott dignity and chivalry in the rising generation ; 
takes too much time. You ought to see her sketch 
the old-school, high-and-mighty manners, as they sur- 
vive among some of the antiques in Charlottesburg. 
If that thing could be put upon the stage it would 
be a killing success. Makes the old gentleman laugh 
in spite of himself. But he’s as proud of her as 
Punch, anyway. Why don’t you and Mrs. March 
come round oftener? Look here! How would it 
do to have a little excursion, somewhere, after the 
spring fairly gets in its work ?” 

“ Reporters present ?” 

“No, no! Nothing of that kind; perfectly sincere 
and disinterested enjoyment.” 

“Oh, a few handbills to be scattered around: 
‘Buy Hvery Other Week, ‘Look out for the next 
number of Hvery Other Week,’ ‘Huery Other Week at 
all the news stands.’ Well, I'll talk it over with 
Mrs. March. I suppose there’s no great hurry.” 

March told his wife of the idyllic mood in which 
he had left Fulkerson at the widow’s door, and she 
said he must be in love. 

‘““Why of course! I wonder I didn’t think of 
that. But Fulkerson is such an impartial admirer 
of the whole sex that you can’t think of his liking 
one more than another. I don’t know that he 
showed any unjust partiality, though, in his talk of 
‘those girls,’ as he called them. And I always 
rather fancied that Mrs, Mandel—he’s done so much 
for her, you know; and she és such a well-balanced, 


well-preserved person, and so lady-like and cor- 
rect—” 

‘Fulkerson had the word for her: academic. 
She’s everything that instruction and discipline can 
make of a woman; but I shouldn’t think they could 
make enough of her to be in Jove with,” 

“Well, I don’t know. The academic has its 
charm. There are moods in which I could imagine 
myself in love with an academic person. That 
regularity of line; that reasoned strictness of con- 
tour; that neatness of pose; that slightly conven- 
tional but harmonious grouping of the emotions and 
morals—you can see how it would have its charm, 
the Wedgwood in human nature? I wonder where 
Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and her willow.” 

‘‘T should think she might have use for them in 
that family, poor thing!” said Mrs. March. 

“Ah, that reminds me,” said her husband, “ that 
we had another talk with the old gentleman, this 
afternoon, about Fulkerson’s literary, artistic, and 
advertising orgy, and it’s postponed till October.” 

‘The later the better, I should think,” said Mrs. 
March, who did not really think about it at all, but 
whom the date fixed for it caused to think of the in- 
tervening time. ‘“ We have got to consider what we 
will do about the summer, before long, Basil.” 

“Oh, not yet, not yet,” he pleaded, with that man’s 
willingness to abide in the present, which is so try- 
ing toa woman. “It’s only the end of April.” 

“It will be the end of June before we know. 
And these people wanting the Boston house another 
year complicates it. We can’t spend the summer 
there, as we planned.” 

“They oughtn’t to have offered us an increased 
rent; they have taken an advantage of us.” 

‘‘T don’t know that it matters,” said Mrs. March. 
‘‘T had decided not to go there.” 

“Had you? This is a surprise.” 

‘‘Everything is a surprise to you, Basil, when it 
happens.” 

“True; I keep the world fresh, that way.” 

“It wouldn’t have been any change to go from 
one city to another for the summer. We might as 
well have staid in New York.” 

“Yes, I wish we had staid,” said March, idly 
humoring a conception of the accomplished fact, 
“Mrs. Green would have let us have the gimcrackery 
very cheap for the summer months; and we could 
have made all sorts of nice little excursions and trips 
off, and been twice as well as if we had spent the 
summer away.” . 

“Nonsense! You know we couldn’t spend the 
summer in New York.” 

“T know J could.” 

“What stuff! You couldn't manage.” 

“Oh, yes, I could. I could take my meals at 
Fulkerson’s widow’s; or at Maroni’s, with poor old 
Lindau: he’s got to dining there again. Or,I could 
keep house, and he could dine with me here.” 


100 


There was a teasing look in March’s eyes, and he 
broke into a laugh, at the firmness with which his 
wife said, “I think if there is to be any house-keep- 
ing, I will stay, too; and help to look after it. I 
would try not to intrude upon you and your 
guest.” 

‘Oh, we should be only too glad to have you join 
us,” said March, playing with fire. 

“Very well, then, I wish you would take him off 
to Maroni’s, the next time he comes to dine here!” 
cried his wife. 

The experiment of making March’s old friend 
free of his house had not given her all the pleasure 
that so kind a thing ought to have afforded so good 
a woman. She received Lindau at first with robust 
benevolence, and the high resolve not to let any of 
his little peculiarities alienate her from a sense of 
his claim upon her sympathy and gratitude, not 
only as a man who had been so generously fond of 
her husband in his youth, but a hero who had suf- 
fered for her country. Her theory was that his mu- 
tilation must not be ignored, but must be kept in 
mind as a monument of his sacrifice, and she forti- 
fied Bella with this conception, so that the child 
bravely sat next his maimed arm at table and helped 
him to dishes he could not reach, and cut up his 
meat for him. As for Mrs. March herself, the 
thought of his mutilation made her a little faint; 
she was not without a bewildered resentment of its 
presence as a sort of oppression. She did not like 
his drinking so much of March’s beer, either; it was 
no harm, but it was somehow unworthy, out of 
character with a hero of the war. But what she 
really could not reconcile herself to was the violence 
of Lindau’s sentiments concerning the whole political 
and social fabric. She did not feel sure that he 
should be allowed to say such things before the chil- 
dren, who had been nurtured in the faith of Bunker 
Hill and Appomattox, as the beginning and the end 
of all possible progress in human rights. As a wo- 
man she was naturally an aristocrat, but as an 
American she was theoretically a democrat; and it 
astounded, it alarmed her, to hear American democ- 
racy denounced as a shuffling evasion. She had 
never cared much for the United States Senate, but 
she doubted if she ought to sit by when it was 
railed at as a rich man’s club. It shocked her to 
be told that the rich and poor were not equal before 
the law in a country where justice must be paid for 
at every step in fees and costs, or where a poor 
man must go to war in his own person, and a rich 
man might hire some one to goin his. Mrs. March 
felt that this rebellious mind in Lindau really some- 
how outlawed him from sympathy, and retroactively 
undid his past suffering for the country: she had 
always particularly valued that provision of the 
law, because in forecasting all the possible mis- 
chances that might befall her own son, she had been 
comforted by the thought that if there ever was an- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


other war, and Tom were drafted, his father could 
buy him a substitute. Compared with such blas- 
phemy as this, Lindau’s declaration that there was 
not equality of opportunity in America, and that 
fully one-half the people were debarred their right 
to the pursuit of happiness by the hopeless con- 
ditions of their lives, was flattering praise. She 
could not listen to such things in silence, though, 
and it did not help matters when Lindau met her 
arguments with facts and reasons which she felt 
she was merely not sufficiently instructed to combat, 
and he was not quite gentlemanly to urge. “Iam 
afraid for the effect on the children,” she said to 
her husband. ‘Such perfectly distorted ideas—Tom 
will be ruined by them.” 

“Oh, let Tom find out where they’re false,” said 
March. ‘It will be good exercise for his faculties 
of research. At any rate, those things are getting 
said nowadays; he’ll have to hear them sqoner or 
later.” 

“Had he better hear them at home ?” demanded 
his wife. 

“Why, you know, as you’re here to refute them, 
Isabel,” he teased, “‘perhaps it’s the best place. 
But don’t mind poor old Lindau, my dear. He says 
himself that his parg is worse than his pidte, you 
know.” 

“« Ah, it’s too late, now, to mind him,” she sighed. 
In a moment of rash good feeling, or perhaps an 
exalted conception of duty, she had herself proposed 
that Lindau should come every week and read Ger- 
man with Tom; and it had become a question first 
how they could get him to take pay for it, and then 
how they could get him to stop it. Mrs. March never 
ceased to wonder at herself for having brought this 
about, for she had warned her husband against 
making any engagement with Lindau which would 
bring him regularly to the house: the Germans stuck 
so, and were so unscrupulously dependent. Yet, the 
deed being done, she would not ignore the duty of 
hospitality, and it was always she who made the old 
man stay to their Sunday evening tea when he lin- 
gered near the hour, reading Schiller and Heine and 
Uhland with the boy, in the clean shirt with which 
he observed the day: Lindau’s linen was not to be 
trusted during the week. She now concluded a 
season of mournful reflection by saying, “ He will 
get you into trouble, somehow, Basil.” 

“Well, I don’t know how, exactly. I regard Lin- 
dau as a political economist of an unusual type; 
but I shall not let him array me against the con- 
stituted authorities. Short of that, I think I am 
safe.” 

‘“‘ Well, be careful, Basil; be careful. 
you are so rash.” 

“T suppose I may continue to pity him? He ¢s 
such a poor lonely, old fellow. Are you really sorry 
he’s come into our lives, my dear ?” 

“No, no; not that. I feel as you do about it; 


You know 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


but I wish I felt easier about him—sure, that is, 
that we’re not doing wrong to let him keep on talk- 
ing so,” 


Ji Aap a 


101 


“T suspect we couldn’t help it,” March returned 
lightly. “It’s one of what Lindau calls his ‘ brin- 
cibles’ to say what he thinks.” 


II. 


Tas Marches had no longer the gross appetite for 
novelty which urges youth to a surfeit of strange 
scenes, experiences, ideas; and makes travel, with 
all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible de- 
light. But there is no doubt that the chief pleasure 
of their life in New York was from its quality of 
foreignness: the flavor of olives, which, once tasted, 
can never be forgotten. The olives may not be of 
the first excellence ; they may be a little stale, and 
small and poor, to begin with, but they are still 
olives, and the fond palate craves them. The sort 
which grew in New York, on lower Sixth Avenue 
and in the region of Jefferson Market and on the 
soft exposures south of Washington Square, were 
none the less acceptable because they were of the 
commonest Italian variety. 

The Marches spent a good deal of time and mon- 
ey in a grocery of that nationality, where they found 
all the patriotic comestibles and potables, and re- 
newed their faded Italian with the friendly family 
in charge. Italian table d’hdtes formed the adven- 
ture of the week, on the day when Mrs. March let 
her domestics go out, and went herself to dine abroad 
with her husband and children; and they became 
adept in the restaurants where they were served, 
and which they varied almost from dinner to din- 
ner. The perfect decorum of these places, and 
their immunity from offence in any, emboldened the 
Marches to experiment in Spanish restaurants, where 
red pepper and beans insisted in every dinner, and 
where once they chanced upon a night of olla po- 
drida, with such appeals to March’s memory of a 
boyish ambition to taste the dish that he became 
poetic and then pensive over its cabbage and car- 
rots, peas and bacon. For a rare combination of 
international motives they prized most the table 
Whote of a French lady, who had taken a Spanish 
husband in a second marriage, and had a Cuban 
negro for her cook, with a cross-eyed Alsacian for 
waiter, and a slim young South American for cashier. 
March held that something of the catholic character 
of these relations expressed itself in the generous 
and tolerant variety of the dinner, which was sin- 
gularly abundant for fifty cents, without wine. At 
one very neat French place he got a dinner at the 
same price with wine, but it was not so abundant; 
and March inquired in fruitless speculation why the 
table d’héote of the Italians, a notoriously frugal and 
abstemious people, should be usually more than you 
wanted at seventy-five cents and a dollar, and that 
of the French rather less for half a dollar. He 


could not see that the frequenters were greatly 
different at the different places; they were mostly 
Americans, of subdued manners and conjecturably 
subdued fortunes, with here and there a table full 
of foreigners. There was no noise and not much 
smoking anywhere; March liked going to that neat 
French place because there Madame sat enthroned 
and high behind a comptotr at one side of the room, 
and everybody saluted her in going out. It was 
there that a gentle-looking young couple used to 
dine, in whom the Marches became effectlessly in- 
terested because they thought they looked like that 
when they were young. The wife had an esthetic 
dress, and defined her pretty head by wearing her 
back hair pulled up very tight under her bonnet; 
the husband had dreamy eyes set wide apart un- 
der a pure forehead. ‘‘ They are artists, August, I 
think,” March suggested to the waiter whom he had 
vainly asked about them. ‘Oh, hartis, cedenly,” 
August consented; but Heaven knows whether they 
were, or what they were: March never learned. 
This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and- 
go quality in their New York sojourn, this almost 
loss of individuality at times, after the intense iden- 
tification of their Boston life, was a relief, though 
Mrs. March had her misgivings, and questioned 
whether it were not perhaps too relaxing to the 
moral fibre. March refused to explore his con- 
science; he allowed that it might be so; but he 
said he liked now and then to feel his personality 
in that state of solution. They went and sat a good 
deal in the softening evenings among the infants 
and dotards of Latin extraction in Washington 
Square, safe from all who ever knew them, and en- 
joyed the advancing season, which thickened the 
foliage of the trees and flattered out of sight the 
church-warden’s gothic of the University Building. 
The infants were sometimes cross, and cried in their 
weary mothers’ or little sisters’ arms; but they did 
not disturb the dotards, who slept, some with their 
heads fallen forward, and some with their heads 
fallen back; March arbitrarily distinguished those 
with the drooping faces as tipsy and ashamed to 
confront the public. The small Italian children 
raced up and down the asphalt paths, playing Ameri- 
can games of tag and hide-and-whoop; larger boys 
passed ball, in training for potential championships. 
The Marches sat and mused, or quarrelled fitfully 
about where they should spend the summer, like 
sparrows, he once said, till the electric lights began 
to show distinctly among the leaves, and they looked 


102 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


round and found the infants and dotards gone, and 
the benches filled with lovers. That was the signal 
for the Marches to go home. He said that the spec- 
tacle of so much courtship as the eye might take 
in there at a glance was not, perhaps, oppressive, 
but the thought that at the same hour the same 
thing was going on all over the country, wherever 
two young fools could get together, was more than 
he could bear; he did not deny that it was natural, 
and, in a measure, authorized, but he declared that 
it was hackneyed; and the fact that it must go on 
forever, as long as the race lasted, made him tired. 

At home, generally, they found that the children 
had not missed them, and were perfectly safe. It 
was one of the advantages of a flat that they could 
leave the children there whenever they liked without 
anxiety. They liked better staying there than wan- 
dering about in the evening with their parents, 
whose excursions seemed to them somewhat aimless, 
and their pleasures insipid. They studied, or read, 
or looked out of the window at the street sights; 
and their mother always came back to them with a 
pang for their lonesomeness. Bella knew some little 
girls in the house, but in a ceremonious way; Tom 
had formed no friendships among the boys at school 
such as he had left in Boston; as nearly as he 
could explain, the New York fellows carried canes 
at an age when they would have had them broken 
for them by the other boys at Boston; and they 
were both sissyish and fast. It was probably 
prejudice; he never could say exactly what their de- 
merits were, and neither he nor Bella was apparently 
so homesick as they pretended, though they answered 
inquirers, the one that New York was a hole, and 
the other that it was horrid, and that al! they lived 
for was to get back to Boston. In the mean time 
they were thrown much upon each other for society, 
which March said was well for both of them; he 
did not mind their cultivating a little gloom and 
_ the sense of a common wrong; it made them better 
comrades, and it was providing them with amusing 
reminiscences for the future. They really enjoyed 
bohemianizing in that harmless way: though Tom 
had his doubts of its respectability; he was very 
punctilious about his sister, and went round from 
his own school every day to fetch her home from 
hers. The whole family went to the theatre a good 
deal, and enjoyed themselves together in their 
desultory explorations of the city. 

They lived near Greenwich Village, and March 
liked strolling through its quaintness toward the 
water-side on a Sunday, when a hereditary Sab- 
batarianism kept his wife at home; he made her 
observe that it even kept her at home from church. 
He found a lingering quality of pure Americanism 
in the region, and he said the very bells called to 
worship in a nasal tone. He liked the streets of 
small brick houses, with here and there one painted 
red, and the mortar lines picked out in white, and 


with now and then a fine wooden portal of fluted 
pillars and a bowed transom. The rear of the 
tenement-houses showed him the picturesqueness of 
clothes-lines fluttering far aloft, as in Florence; and 
the new apartment-houses, breaking the old sky-line 
with their towering stories, implied a life as alien 
to the American manne as anything in continental 
Europe. In fact, foreign faces and foreign tongues 
prevailed in Greenwich Village, but no longer Ger- 
man or even Irish tongues or faces. The eyes and 
ear-rings of Italians twinkled in and out of the 
alleyways and basements, and they seemed to abound 
even in the streets, where long ranks of trucks drawn 
up in Sunday rest along the curb-stones suggested 
the presence of a race of sturdier strength than 
theirs. March liked the swarthy, strange visages ; 
he found nothing menacing for the future in them; 
for wickedness he had to satisfy himself as he could 
with the sneering, insolent, clean-shaven mug of 
some rare American of the b’hoy type, now almost 
as extinct in New York as the dodo or the volunteer 
fireman. When he had found his way, among the 
ash-barrels and the groups of decently dressed 
church-goers, to the docks, he experienced a suffi- 
cient excitement in the recent arrival of a French 
steamer, whose sheds were thronged with hacks and 
express wagons, and in a tacit inquiry into the emo- 
tions of the passengers, fresh from the cleanliness 
of Paris, and now driving up through the filth of 
those streets. 

Some of the streets were filthier than others; 
there was at least a choice; there were boxes and 
barrels of kitchen offal on all the sidewalks, but 
not everywhere manure heaps, and in some places 
the stench was mixed with the more savory smell of 
cooking. One Sunday morning, before the winter 
was quite gone, the sight of the frozen refuse melt- 
ing in heaps, and particularly the loathsome edges 
of the rotting ice near the gutters, with the strata of 
waste paper and straw litter, and egg-shells and 
orange-peel, potato-skins, and cigar - stumps, made 
him unhappy. He gave a whimsical shrug for the 
squalor of the neighboring houses, and said to him- 
self rather than the boy who was with him: “It’s 
curious, isn’t it, how fond the poor people are of 
these unpleasant thoroughfares? You always find 
them living in the worst streets.” 

“The burden of all the wrong in the world comes 
on the poor,” said the boy. ‘Every sort of fraud 
and swindling hurts them the worst. The city 
wastes the money it’s paid to clean the streets with, 
and the poor have to suffer, for they can’t afford to 
pay twice, like the rich.” 

March stopped short. ‘Hallo, Tom! Is that 
your wisdom ?” 

“Tt’s what Mr. Lindau says,” answered the boy, 
doggedly, as if not pleased to have his ideas mocked 
at, even if they were second-hand. 

“And you didn’t tell him that the poor lived in 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


‘dirty streets because they liked them, and were too 
lazy and worthless to have them cleaned ?” 

Nosh didn’t.” 

“Tm surprised. What do you think of Lindau, 
generally speaking, Tom ?” 

‘Well, sir, I don’t like the way he talks about 
‘some things. I don’t suppose this country zs per- 
fect, but I think it’s about the best there is, and it 
don’t do any good to look at its: drawbacks all the 
time.” 

‘Sound, my son,” said March, putting his hand 
‘on the boy’s shoulder and beginning to walk on. 
“ Well ?” 

“ Well, then, he says that it isn’t the public frauds 
only that the poor have to pay for, but they have 
to pay for all the vices of the rich; that when a 
. speculator fails, or a bank cashier defaults,.or a 

firm suspends, or hard times come, it’s the poor who 
have to give up necessaries where the rich give up 
luxuries.” 

“ Well, well! And then ?” 

* Well, then I think the crank comes in, in Mr. 
Lindau. He says there’s no need of failures or 
frauds or hard times. It’s ridiculous. There always 

have been and there always will be. But if you tell 
him that, it seems to make him perfectly furious,” 

March repeated the substance of this talk to his 
wife. ‘I’m glad to know that Tom can see through 
such ravings. He has lots of good common-sense.” 

It was the afternoon of the same Sunday, and 
they were sauntering up~ Fifth Avenue, and ad- 

miring the wide old double bouses at the lower end; 
‘at one corner they got a distinct pleasure out of 
the gnarled elbows that a pollarded wistaria leaned 
upon the top of a garden wall—for its convenience 
in looking into the street, he said. The line of 
these comfortable dwellings, once so fashionable, 
was continually broken by the facades of shops; 
and March professed himself vulgarized by a want 
of style in the people they met in their walk to 
‘Twenty-third Street. 

“Take me somewhere to meet my fellow-ex- 
clusives, Isabel,” he demanded. “TI pine for the 
society of my peers.” 7 

He hailed a passing omnibus, and made his wife 
get on the roof with him. “Think of our doing 

such a thing in Boston!” she sighed, with a little 
shiver of satisfaction in her immunity from recog- 
nition and comment. 

“You wouldn’t be afraid to do it in London or 
Paris ?” 

“No; we should be strangers there—just as we 
are in New York. I wonder how long one could 
be a stranger here.” 

“Qh, indefinitely, in our way of living. The place 
is really vast, so much larger than it used to seem, 
and so heterogeneous.” 

When they got down, very far up town, and be- 

gan to walk back by Madison Avenue, they found 


103 


themselves in a different population from that they 
dwelt among ; not heterogeneous at all; very homo- 
geneous, and almost purely American; the only 
qualification was American Hebrew. Such a well- 
dressed, well-satisfied, well-fed looking crowd poured 
down the broad sidewalks before the handsome, 
stupid houses that March could easily pretend he 
had got among his fellow-plutocrats at last. Still, 
he expressed his doubts whether this Sunday after- 
noon parade, which seemed to be a thing of custom, 
represented the best form among the young people 
of that region; he wished he knew; he blamed him- 
self for becoming of a fastidious conjecture; he 
could not deny the fashion and the richness and the 
indigeneity of the spectacle ; the promenaders looked 
New-Yorky; they were the sort of people whom 
you would know for New-Yorkers elsewhere, so 
well appointed and so perfectly kept at all points. 
Their silk hats shone, and their boots; their frocks 
had the right distension behind, and their bonnets 
perfect poise and distinction. 

The Marches talked of these and other facts of 
their appearance, and curiously questioned whether 
this were the best that a great material civilization 
could come to; it looked a little dull. The men’s 
faces were shrewd and alert, and yet they looked 
dull; the women’s were pretty and knowing, and 
yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression 
of the vast, prosperous, commercial class, with un- 
limited money, and no ideals that money could not 
realize ; fashion and comfort were all that they de- 
sired to compass, and the culture that furnishes 
showily, that decorates and that tells; the culture, 
say, of plays and operas, rather than books. 

Perhaps the observers did the promenaders injus- 
tice; they might not have been as common-minded 
as they looked. ‘ But,” March said, “I understand 
now why the poor people don’t come up here and 
live in this clean, handsome, respectable quarter of 
the town; they would be bored to death. On the 
whole, I think I should prefer Mott Street myself.” 

In other walks the Marches tried to find some of 
the streets they had wandered through the first day 
of their wedding journey in New York, so long ago. 
They could not make sure of them; but once they 
ran down to the Battery, and easily made sure of 
that, though not in its old aspect. They recalled 
the hot morning, when they sauntered over the trod- 
den weed that covered the sickly grass-plots there, 
and sentimentalized the sweltering paupers who had 
crept out of the squalid tenements about for a breath 
of air after a sleepless night. Now the paupers 
were gone, and where the old mansions that had 
fallen to their use once stood, there towered aloft 
and abroad those heights and masses of many-storied 
brick-work for which architecture has yet no proper 
form and esthetics no name. The trees and shrubs, 
all in their young spring green, blew briskly over 
the guarded turf in the south wind that came up 


104 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


over the water; and in the well-paved alleys the 
ghosts of eighteenth-century fashion might have 
met each other in their old haunts, and exchanged 
stately congratulations upon its vastly bettered con- 
dition, and perhaps puzzled a little over the colossal 
lady on Bedlow’s Island, with her lifted torch, and 
still more over the curving tracks and chalet-stations 
of the elevated road. It is an outlook of unrivalled 
beauty across the bay, that smokes and flashes with 
the innumerable stacks and sails of commerce to 
the hills beyond, where the moving forest of masts 
halts at the shore, and roots itself in the groves of 
the many-villaged uplands. The Marches paid the 
charming prospect a willing duty, and rejoiced in it 
as generously as if it had been their own. Perhaps 
it was, they decided. He said people owned more 
things in common than they were apt to think; and 
they drew the consolations of proprietorship from 
the excellent management of Castle Garden, which 
they penetrated for a moment’s glimpse of the huge 
rotunda, where the emigrants first set foot on our 
continent. It warmed their hearts, so easily moved 
to any cheap sympathy, to see the friendly care the 
nation took of these humble guests; they found it 
even pathetic to hear the proper authority calling 
out the names of such as-had kin or acquaintance 
waiting there to meet them. No one appeared trou- 
bled or anxious; the officials had a conscientious 


civility; the government seemed to manage their 


welcome as well as a private company or corporation 
could have done. In fact, it was after the simple 
strangers had left the government care that March 
feared their woes might begin; and he would have 
liked the government to follow each of them to his 
home, wherever he meant to fix it within our bor- 
ders. He made note of the looks of the licensed 
runners and touters waiting for the immigrants out- 
side the government premises; he intended to work 
them up into a dramatic effect in some sketch, but 
they remained mere material in his memorandum- 
book, together with some quaint old houses on the 
Sixth Avenue road, which he had noticed on the 
way down. On the way up, these were superseded 
in his regard by some hip-roof structures on the 
Ninth Avenue, which he thought more Dutch-look- 
ing. The perspectives of the cross-streets toward 
the river were very lively, with their turmoil of 
trucks and cars and carts and hacks and foot-pas- 
sengers, ending in the chimneys and masts of ship- 
ping, and final gleams of dancing water. At a very 
noisy corner, clangorous with some sort of iron- 
working, he made his wife enjoy with him the quiet 
sarcasm of an inn that called itself the Homelike 
Hotel, and he speculated at fantastic length on the 
gentle associations of one who should have passed 
his youth under its roof. 


i$ 


First and last, the Marches did a good deal of 
travel on the elevated roads, which, he said, gave 
you such glimpses of material aspects in the city as 
some violent invasion of others’ lives might afford 
in human nature. Once, when the impulse of adven- 
ture was very strong in them, they went quite the 
length of the west side lines, and saw the city push- 
ing its way by irregular advances into the country. 
Some spaces, probably held by the owners for that 
rise in value which the industry of others providen- 
tially gives to the land of the wise and good, it left 
vacant comparatively far down the road, and built 
up others at remoter points. It was a world of 
lofty apartment-houses beyond the Park, springing 
up in isolated blocks, with stretches of invaded rus- 
ticity between, and here and there an old country- 
seat standing dusty in its budding vines, with the 
ground before it in rocky upheaval for city founda- 
tions. But wherever it went or wherever it paused, 
New York gave its peculiar stamp; and the adven- 
turers were amused to find One-hundred-and-twenty- 
fifth Street inchoately like Twenty-third Street and 
Fourteenth Street in its shops and shoppers. The 
butchers’ shops and milliners’ shops on the avenue 
might as well have been at Tenth as at One-hun- 
dredth Street. 


The adventurers were not often so adventurous, 


They recognized that in their willingness to let their 


fancy range for them, and to let speculation do the 
work of inquiry, they were no longer young. Their 
point of view was singularly unchanged, and their 
impressions of New York remained the same that 
they had been fifteen years before: huge, noisy, 
ugly, kindly, it seemed to them now as it seemed 
then. The main difference was that they saw it 
more now as a life, and then they only regarded it 
a spectacle; and March could not release himself 
from a sense of complicity with it, no matter what 
whimsical, or alien, or critical attitude he took. A 
sense of the striving and the suffering deeply pos- 
sessed him; and this grew the more intense as he 
gained some knowledge of the forces at work— 
forces of pity, of destruction, of perdition, of sal- 
vation. He wandered about on Sunday not only 
through the streets, but into this tabernacle and 
that, as the spirit moved him, and listened to those 
who dealt with Christianity as a system of eco- 
nomics as well as a religion. He could not get his 
wife to go with him; she listened to his report of 
what he heard, and trembled; it all seemed fantas- 
tic and menacing. She lamented the literary peace, 
the intellectual refinement of the life they had left 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


behind them; and he owned it was very pretty, but 
he said it was not life—it was death-in-life. She 
liked to hear him talk in that strain of virtuous 
self-denunciation, but she asked him, “ Which of 
your prophets are you going to follow?” and he 
answered, “ All—all! And a fresh one every Sun- 
day.” And so they got their laugh out of it at last, 
but with some sadness at heart, and with a dim 
consciousness that they had got.their laugh out of 
too many things in life. 

What really occupied and compassed his activi- 
ties, in spite of his strenuous reveries of work be- 
yond it, was his editorship. On its social side it 
had not fulfilled all the expectations which Fulker- 
son’s radiant sketch of its duties and relations had 
caused him to form of it. Most of the contributions 
_ came from a distance; even the articles written in 
New York reached him through the post, and so 
far from having his valuable time, as they called it, 
consumed in interviews with his collaborators, he 
rarely saw any of them. The boy on the stairs, 
who was to fence him from importunate visitors, led 
a life of luxurious disoccupation, and whistled al- 
most uninterruptedly. When any one came, March 
found himself embarrassed and a little anxious, 
The visitors were usually young men, terribly re- 
spectful, but cherishing, as he imagined, ideals and 
opinions chasmally different from his; and he felt 
in their presence something like an anachronism, 
something like a fraud. He tried to freshen up his 
sympathies on them, to get at what they were really 
thinking and feeling, and it was some time before 
he could understand that they were not really think- 
ing and feeling anything of their own concerning 
their art, but were necessarily, in their quality of 
young, inexperienced men, mere acceptants of older 
men’s thoughts and feelings, whether they were tre- 
mendously conservative, as some were, or tremen- 
dously progressive, as others were. Certain of them 
called themselves realists, certain romanticists; but 
none of them seemed to know what realism was, or 
what romanticism; they apparently supposed the 
difference a difference of material. March had 
imagined himself taking home to lunch or dinner 
the aspirants for editorial favor whom he liked, 
whether he liked their work or not; but this was 
not an easy matter. Those who were at all inter- 
esting seemed to have engagements and preoccupa- 
tions ; after two or three experiments with the bash- 
fuler sort—those who had come up to the metrop- 
olis with manuscripts in their hands, in the good 
old literary tradition—he wondered whether he was 
otherwise like them when he was young like them. 
He could not flatter himself that he was not, and 
yet he had a hope that the world had grown worse 
since his time, which his wife encouraged. 

Mrs. March was not eager to pursue the hospi- 
talities which she had at first imagined essential to 
the literary prosperity of Hvery Other Week; her 


105. 


family sufficed her; she would willingly have seen 
no one out of it but the strangers at the weekly 
table @héte dinner, or the audiences at the theatres. 
March’s devotion to his work made him reluctant to 
delegate it to any one, and as the summer advanced, 
and the question of where to go grew more vexed, 
he showed a man’s base willingness to shirk it for 
himself by not going anywhere. He asked his wife 
why she did not go somewhere with the children; 
and he joined her in a search for non-malarial re- 
gions on the map, when she consented to entertain 
this notion. But when it came to the point, she 
would not go; he offered to go with her then, and 
then she would not let him. She said she knew he 
would be anxious about his work ; he protested that 
he could take it with him to any distance within a 
few hours, but she would not be persuaded. She 
would rather he staid; the effect would be better 
with Mr. Fulkerson; they could make excursions, 
and they could all get off a week or two to the sea- 
shore near Boston, the only real sea-shore, in Au- 
gust. The excursions were practically confined io. 
a single day at Coney Island; and once they got 
as far as Boston on the way to the sea-shore near 
Boston ; that is, Mrs. March and the children went;. 
an editorial exigency kept March at the last mo.. 
ment. The Boston streets seemed very queer and 
clean and empty to the children, and the buildings 
little; in the horse-cars the Boston faces seemed to 
arraign their mother with a down-drawn severity 
that made her feel very guilty. She knew that this 
was merely the Puritan mask, the cast of a dead 
civilization, which people of very amiable and tol- 
erant minds were doomed to wear, and she sighed to. 
think that less than a year of the heterogeneous. 
gayety of New York should have made her afraid 
of it. The sky seemed cold and gray; the east wind,. 
which she had always thought so delicious in sum- 
mer, cut her to the heart. She took her children up- 
to the South End, and in the pretty square where: 
they used to live, they stood before their alienated 
home and looked up at its close-shuttered windows. 
The tenants must have been away, but Mrs. March 
had not the courage to ring and make sure, though 
she had always promised herself that she would go- 
all over the house when she came back, and see 
how they had used it; she could pretend a desire. 
for something she wished to take away. She knew 
she could not bear it now; and the children did, 
not seem eager. She did not push on to the sea- 
side; it would be forlorn there without their father ; 
she was glad to go back to him in the immense, 
friendly homelessness of New York, and hold him 
answerable for the change in her heart, or her mind, 
which made its shapeless tumult a refuge and a 
consolation. 

She found that he had been giving the cook a 
holiday, and dining about hither and thither with 
Fulkerson. Once, he had dined with him at the 


106 


widow’s (as they always called Mrs. Leighton), and 
then had spent the evening there, and smoked with 
Fulkerson and Colonel Woodburn on the gallery 
overlooking the back yard. They were all spend- 
ing the summer in New York. Thé widow had got 
so good an offer for her house at St. Barnaby for 
the summer that she could not refuse it; and the 
Woodburns found New York a watering-place of 
exemplary coolness after the burning Augusts and 
Septembers of Charlottesburg. 

“You can stand it well enough in our climate, 
sir,” the Colonel explained, “till you come to the 
September heat, that sometimes runs well into Oc- 
tober; and then you begin to lose your temper, sir. 
It’s never quite so hot as it is in New York at 
times, but it’s hot longer, sir.” He alleged, as if 
something of the sort were necessary, the example 
of a famous Southwestern editor, who spent all his 
summers in a New York hotel, as the most luxurious 
retreat on the continent, consulting the weather fore- 
casts, and running off on torrid days to the moun- 
tains or the sea, and then hurrying back at the 
promise of cooler weather. The Colonel had not 
found it necessary to do this yet; and he had been 
reluctant to leave town, where he was working up 
a branch of the inquiry which had so long occupied 
him, in the libraries, and studying the great prob- 
lem of labor and poverty as it continually present- 
ed itself to him in the streets. He said that he 
talked with all sorts of people, whom he found 
monstrously civil, if you took them in the right 
way; and he went everywhere in the city without 
fear and apparently without danger. March could 
not find out that he had ridden his hobby into the 
homes of want which he visited, or had proposed 
their enslavement to the inmates as a short and 
simple solution of the great question of their lives; 
he appeared to have contented himself with the 
collection of facts for the persuasion of the culti- 
vated classes. It seemed to March a confirmation 
of this impression that the Colonel should address 
his, deductions from these facts so unsparingly to 
him; he listened with a respectful patience, for 
which Fulkerson afterward personally thanked him. 
Fulkerson said it was not often the Colonel found 
such a good listener; generally, nobody listened but 
Mrs. Leighton, who thought his ideas were shock- 
ing, but honored him for holding them so conscien- 
tiously. Fulkerson was glad that March, as the lit- 
erary department, had treated the old gentleman 
so well, because there was an open feud between 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


him and the art department. Beaton was outrage- 
ously rude, Fulkerson must say; though as for that, 
the old Colonel seemed quite able to take care of 
himself, and gave Beaton an unqualified contempt 
in return for his unmannerliness.. The worst of it 
was, it distressed the old lady so; she admired Bea- 
ton as much as she respected the Colonel, and she 
admired Beaton, Fulkerson thought, rather more 
than Miss Leighton did; he asked March if he had 
noticed them together. March had noticed them, 
but without any very definite impression except that 
Beaton seemed to give the whole evening to the 
girl. Afterward he recollected that he had fan- 
cied her rather harassed by his devotion, and it was 
this point that he wished to present for his wife’s 
opinion. , 

“Girls often put on that air,” she said. “It’s 
one of their ways of teasing. But, then, if the man 
was really very much in love, and she was only 
enough in love to be uncertain of herself, she might 
very well seem troubled. It would bea very serious 
question. Girls often don’t know what to do in 
such a case.” 

‘“ Yes,” said March, “I’ve often been glad that I 
was not a girl, on that account. But I guess that 
on general principles Beaton is not more in love 
than she is. I couldn’t imagine that young man 
being more in love with anybody, unless it was him- 
self. He might be more in love with himself than 
any one else was.” 

“Well, he doesn’t interest me a great deal, and I 
can’t say Miss Leighton does, either. I think she 
can take care of herself. She has herself very well 
in hand.” 

“Why so censorious ?” pleaded March. ‘I don’t 
defend her for having herself in hand; but is it a 
fault ?” 

Mrs. March did not say. She asked, ‘“ And how 
does Mr. Fulkerson’s affair get on ?” 

“ His affair? You really think it 2s one? Well, 
I’ve fancied so myself, and I’ve had an idea of some 
time asking him; Fulkerson strikes one as truly 
domesticable, conjugable at heart; but I’ve waited 
for him to speak.” 

‘“‘T should think so.” 

“Yes, He’s never opened on the subject yet. 
I think Fulkerson has his moments of delicacy.” 

“Moments! He’s al/ delicacy in regard to wo- 
men.” 

“Well, perhaps so. There is nothing in them to 
rouse his advertising instincts.” 


(« HHOA MAN NI AVIS SIH NO NOLVYAA DNIVRINVE “MALLET V ALOWM AHS aTaH S,VIAN HII ,, 


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> +) 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


107 


IV. 


THe Dryfoos family staid in town till August. 
Then the father went West again to look after his 
interests ; and Mrs. Mandel took the two girls to 
one of the great hotels in Saratoga. Fulkerson 
said that he had never seen anything like Saratoga 
for fashion, and Mrs. Mandel remembered that in 
her own young ladyhood this was so for at least 
some weeks of the year. She had been too far 
withdrawn from fashion since her marriage to know 
whether it was still so or not. In this, as in so 
many other matters, the Dryfoos family helplessly 
relied upon Fulkerson, in spite of Dryfoos’s angry 
determination that he should not run the family, 
and in spite of Christine’s doubt of his omniscience ; 
if he did not know everything, she was aware that 
he knew more than herself. She thought that they 
had a right to have him go with them to Saratoga, 
or at least go up and engage their rooms before- 
hand; but Fulkerson did not offer to do either, and 
she did not quite see her way to commanding his 
services. The young ladies took what Mela called 
splendid dresses with them; they sat in the park 
of tall, slim trees which the hotel’s quadrangle en- 
closed, and listened to the music in the morning, or 
on the long piazza in the afternoon and looked at 
the driving in the street, or in the vast parlors by 
night, where all the other ladies were, and they felt 
that they were of the best there. But they knew 
nobody, and Mrs. Mandel was so particular that 
Mela was prevented from continuing the acquaint- 
ance even of the few young men who danced with 
her at the Saturday-night hops. They drove about, 
but they went to places without knowing why, ex- 
cept that the carriage man took them, and they had 
all the privileges of a proud exclusivism without 


desiring them. Once a motherly matron seemed, 


to perceive their isolation, and made overtures to 
them, but then desisted, as if repelled by Christine’s 
suspicion, or by! Mela’s too instant and hilarious 
good-fellowship, which expressed itself in hoarse 
laughter and in a flow of talk full of topical and 
syntactical freedom. From time to time she offered 
to bet Christine that if Mr. Fulkerson was only 
there they would have a good time; she wondered 
what they were all doing in New York, where she 
wished herself; she rallied her sister about Beaton, 
and asked her why she did not write and tell him 
to come up there. 

Mela knew that Christine had expected Beaton 
to follow them. Some banter had passed between 
them to this effect; he said he should take them 
in on his way home to Syracuse. Christine would 
not have hesitated to write to him and remind him 
of his promise; but she had learned to distrust her 
literature with Beaton since he had laughed at the 


spelling in a scrap of writing which dropped out of 
her music-book one night. She believed that he 
would not have laughed if he had known it was 
hers; but she felt that she could hide better the 
deficiencies which were not committed to paper; she 
could manage with him in talking; she was too 
ignorant of her ignorance to recognize the mistakes 
she made then. Through her own passion she per- 
ceived that she had some kind of fascination for 
him; she was graceful, and she thought it must 
be that; she did not understand that there was a 
kind of beauty in her small, irregular features that 
piqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a look 
in her black eyes beyond her intelligence and in- 
tention. Once he sketched her as they sat together, 
and flattered the portrait without getting what he 
wanted in it;'he said he must try her some time 
in color; and he said things which, when she made 
Mela repeat them, could only mean that he admired 
her more than anybody else. He came fitfully, but 
he came often, and she rested content in a girl’s 
indefiniteness concerning the affair; if her thought 
went beyond love-making to marriage, she believed 
that she could have him if she wanted him. Her 
father’s money counted in this; she divined that 
Beaton was poor; but that made no difference; she 
would have enough for both; the money would 
have counted as an irresistible attraction if there 
had been no other. 

The affair had gone on in spite of the sidelong 
looks of restless dislike with which Dryfoos regard- 
ed it; but now when Beaton did not come to Sara- 
toga it necessarily dropped, and Christine’s content 
with it. She bore the trial as long as she could; 
she used pride and resentment against it; but at 
last she could not bear it, and with Mela’s help she 
wrote a letter, bantering Beaton on his stay in New 
York, and playfully boasting of Saratoga. It seemed 
to them both that it was a very bright letter, and 
would be sure to bring him; they would have had 
no scruple about sending it but for the doubt they 
had whether they had got some of the words right. 
Mela offered to bet Christine anything she dared 
that they were right, and she said, Send it anyway ; 
it was no difference if they were wrong. But Chris- 
tine could not endure to think of that laugh of 
Beaton’s, and there remained only Mrs. Mandel as 
authority on the spelling. Christine dreaded her 
authority on other points, but Mela said she knew 
she would not interfere, and she undertook to get 
round her. Mrs. Mandel pronounced the spelling 
bad, and the taste worse; she forbade them to send 
the letter ; and Mela failed to get round her, though 
she threatened, if Mrs. Mandel would not tell her 
how to spell the wrong words, that she would send 


108 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


the letter as it was; then Mrs. Mandel said that if 
Mr. Beaton appeared in Saratoga she would instant- 
ly take them both home. When Mela reported this 
result, Christine accused her of having mismanaged 
the whole business; she quarrelled with her, and 
they called each other names. Christine declared 
that she would not stay in Saratoga, and that if Mrs. 
Mandel did not go back to New York with her she 
should go alone. They returned the first week in 
September ; but by that time Beaton had gone to see 
his people in Syracuse. 

Conrad Dryfoos remained at home with his mo- 
ther after his father went West. He had already 
taken such a vacation as he had been willing to al- 
low himself, and had spent it on a charity farm 
near the city, where the fathers with whom he work- 
ed among the poor on the east side in the winter 
had sent some of their wards for the summer. It 
was not possible to keep his recreation a secret at 
the office, and Fulkerson found a pleasure in fig- 
uring the jolly time Brother Conrad must have 
teaching farm-work among those paupers and po- 
tential reprobates. He invented details of his ex- 
perience among them, and March could not always 
help joining in the laugh at Conrad’s humorless 
helplessness under Fulkerson’s burlesque denuncia- 
tion of a summer outing spent in such dissipation. 

They had time for a great deal of joking at the 
office during the season of leisure which penetrates 
in August to the very heart of business, and they 
all got on terms of greater intimacy if not greater 
friendliness than before. Fulkerson had not had 
so long to do with the advertising side of human 
nature without developing a vein of cynicism, of no 
great depth, perhaps, but broad, and underlying his 
whole point of view; he made light of Beaton’s 
solemnity, as he made’ light of Conrad’s humanity. 
The art editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more 
humor than the publisher, and was an easy prey in 
the manager’s hands; but when he had been led on 
by Fulkerson’s flatteries to make some betrayal of 
egotism, he brooded over it till he had thought how 
to revenge himself in elaborate insult. For Beaton’s 
talent Fulkerson never lost his admiration; but his 
Joke was to encourage him to give himself airs of 
being the sole source of the magazine’s prosperity. 
No bait of this sort was too obvious for Beaton to 
swallow; he could be caught with it as often as 
Fulkerson chose, though he was ordinarily suspi- 
cious as to the motives of people in saying things. 
With March he got on no better than at first. He 
seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment 
of the literary department on the art department, 
and he met it now and then with anticipative re- 
prisal. After these rebuffs, the editor delivered him 
over to the manager, who could turn Beaton’s con- 
trary-mindedness to account by asking the reverse 
‘of what he really wanted done. This was what 
Fulkerson said; the fact was that he did get on 


with Beaton; and March contented himself with. 


musing upon the contradictions of a character at 
once so vain and so offensive, so fickle and so sul- 
len, so conscious and so simple. 

After the first jarring contact with Dryfoos, the 


editor ceased to feel the disagreeable fact of the 
old man’s mastery of the financial situation. None: 
of the chances which might have made it painful. 


occurred ; the control of the whole affair remained 


in Fulkerson’s hands; before he went West again,. 


Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office, as if, 
having once worn off the novelty of the sense of 
owning a literary periodical, he was no longer inter- 
ested in it. 


Yet it was a relief, somehow, when he left town,. 


which he did not do without coming to take a 


formal leave of the editor at his office. He seemed. 


willing to leave March with a better impression 
than he had hitherto troubled himself to make; 
he even said some civil things about the magazine, 
as if its success pleased him; and he spoke openly 
to March of his hope that his son would finally be- 
come interested in it to the exclusion of the hopes 
and purposes which divided them. It seemed to 
March that in the old man’s warped and toughened. 
heart he perceived a disappointed love for his son 
greater than for his other children; but this might. 
have been fancy. Lindau came in with some copy 
while Dryfoos was there, and March introduced them. 
When Lindau went out, March explained to Dryfoos 
that he had lost his hand in the war; and he told 
him something of Lindau’s career as he had known 
it. Dryfoos appeared greatly pleased that Every. 
Other Week was giving Lindau work. He said that 
he had helped to enlist a good many fellows for 
the war, and had paid money to fill up the Moffitt 
County quota under the later calls for troops. He 
had never been an Abolitionist, but he had joined 
the Anti-Nebraska party in ’55, and be had voted 
for Fremont and for every Republican President 
since then. 

At his own house March saw more of Lindau 
than of any other contributor, but the old man 


‘seemed to think that he must transact all his busi- 
ness with March at his place of business. The 
transaction had some peculiarities which perhaps- 
made this necessary. Lindau always expected to. 


receive his money when he brought his copy, as an 
acknowledgment of the immediate right of the la- 
borer to his hire; and he would not take it in a 
check because he did not approve of banks, and 
regarded the whole system of banking as the cap- 
italistic manipulation of the people’s money. He 
would receive his pay only from March’s hand, be- 
cause he wished to be understood as working for 


him, and honestly earning money honestly earned ; 


and sometimes March inwardly winced a little at 
letting the old man share the increase of capital. 
won by such speculation as Dryfoos’s, but he shook 


: 
4 
q 
‘ 
A 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


-off the feeling. As the summer advanced, and the 
artists and classes that employed Lindau as a model 
left town one after another, he gave largely of his 
increasing leisure to the people in the office of 
FTivery Other Week. It was pleasant for March to 
see the respect with which Conrad Dryfoos always 
used him, for the sake-of his wound and his gray 
yeard. There was something delicate and fine in 
it, and there was nothing unkindly on Fulkerson’s 
‘part in the hostilities which usually passed between 
him and Lindau. Fulkerson bore himself reverent- 
ly at times too, but it was not in him to keep that 
‘up, especially when Lindau appeared with more beer 
aboard than, as Fulkerson said, he could manage 
ship-shape. On these occasions Fulkerson always 
tried to start him on the theme of the unduly rich; 
he made himself the champion of monopolies,.and 
enjoyed the invectives which Lindau heaped upon 
him as a slave of capital; he said that it did him 
good. 

One day, with the usual show of writhing under 
‘Lindau’s scorn, he said, ‘“ Well, I understand that 
although you despise me now, Lindau—” 

“T ton’t desbise you,” the old man broke in, his 
nostrils swelling and his eyes flaming with excite- 
ment; “I bity you.” 

“Well, it seems to come to the same thing in 
the end,” said Fulkerson. ‘“ What I understand is 
that you pity me now as the slave of capital, but 
you would pity me a great deal more if I was the 
master of it.” 

“‘ How you mean ?” 

“Tf I was rich.” 

“That would tebendt,” said Lindau, trying to con- 
trol himself. “If you hat inheritedt your money, 
you might pe innocent; but if you hat mate it, 
-efery man that resbectedt himself would haf to ask 
‘how you mate it, and if you hat mate moch, he 
would know—” 

“Hold on; hold on, now, Lindau! Ain’t that 
rather un-American doctrine? We’re all brought 
up, ain’t we, to honor the man that made his money, 
-and look down+—or try to look down; sometimes 
it’s difficult —on the fellow that his father left 
it to?” 

The old man rose and struck his breast. ‘‘ On- 
Amerigan!” he roared, and, as he went on, his ac- 
‘cent grew more and more uncertain. ‘‘ What iss 
Amerigan? Dere iss no Ameriga any more! You 
start here free and brafe, and you glaim for efery 
man de righdt to life, liperty, and de bursuit of 
‘habbiness. And where haf you entedt? No man 
that vorks vith his handts among you hass the 
liperty to bursue his habbiness. He iss the slafe 
of some richer man, some gompany, some gorpora- 
tion, dat crindts him down to the least he can lif 
on, and that rops him of the marchin of his earn- 
ings that he might pe habby on. Oh, you Ameri- 
-gans, you haf cot it down goldt,as you say! You 


109 


ton’t puy foters; you puy lechislatures and gon- 
cressmen; you puy gourts; you puy gombetitors ; 
you bay infentors not to infent; you atfertise, and 
the gounting-room sees dat de etitorial-room toesn’t 
tink.” 

“Yes, we’ve got a little arrangement of that sort 
with March here,” said Fulkerson. 

“Oh, I am sawry,” said the old man, contritely. 
“T meant noting bersonal. I ton’t tink we are all 
cuilty: or gorrubt, and efen among the rich there 
are goodt men. But gabidal’—his passion rose 
again—‘“ where you find gabidal, millions of money 
that a man hass cot togeder in fife, ten, tventy years, 
you findt the smell of tears and ploodt! Dat iss 
what I say. And you cot to loog oudt for yourself 
when you meet a rich man whether you meet an 
honest man.” 

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “I wish I was a subject 
of suspicion with you, Lindau. By-the-way,” he 
added, “I understand that you think capital was 
at the bottom of the veto of that pension of yours.”’ 

“What bension? What feto?”? The old man 
flamed up again. ‘No bension of mine was efer 
fetoedt. I renounce my bension, begause I would 
sgorn to dake money from a gofernment that I 
tond’t peliefe in any more. Where you hear that 
story ?” 

“Well, I don’t know,” said Fulkerson, rather em- 
barrassed. “It’s common talk.” 

‘“‘Tt’s a gommon lie, then! When the time gome 
dat dis iss a vree gountry again, then I dake a 
bension again for my woundts; but I would sdarfe 
before I dake a bension now from a rebublic dat is 
bought oap by monobolies, andt ron by drusts and 
gompines, and railroadts andt oil gompanies !”’ 

“Look out, Lindau,” said Fulkerson. ‘ You bite 
yourself mit dat dog some day.” But when the 
old man, with a ferocious gesture of renunciation, 
whirled out of the place, he added: “I guess I went 
a little too far that time. I touched him on a sore 
place; I didn’t mean to; I heard some talk about 
his pension being vetoed, from Miss Leighton.” He 
addressed these exculpations to March’s grave face, 
and to the pitying deprecation in the eyes of Conrad 
Dryfoos, whom Lindau’s roaring wrath had sum- 
moned to the door. “But Dll make it all right 
with him the next time he comes. I didn’t know 
he was loaded, or I wouldn’t have monkeyed with 
him.” 

“‘Tindau does himself injustice when he gets to 
talking in that way,” said March. ‘I hate to hear 
him. He’s as good an American as any of us; and 
it’s only because he has too high an ideal of us—” 

“Oh, go on! Rub it in—rub it in!” cried Ful- 
kerson, clutching his hair in suffering, which was 
not altogether burlesque. ‘‘ How did I know he had 
renounced his ‘bension’? Why didn’t you tell 
me ?” 

“T didn’t know it myself. I only knew that he 


110 


had none, and I didn’t ask, for I had a notion that 
it might be a painful subject.” 

Fulkerson tried to turn it off lightly. “ Well, 
he’s a noble old fellow; pity he drinks.’ March 
would not smile, and Fulkerson broke out: “ Dog 
on it! Ill make it up to the old fool the next 
time he comes. I don’t like that dynamite talk of 
his; but any man that’s given his hand to the coun- 
try has got mine in his grip for good. Why, March! 
You don’t suppose I wanted to hurt his feelings, do 
you ?” 

“ Why, of course not, Fulkerson.” 

But they could not get away from a certain rue- 
fulness for that time, and in the evening Fulkerson 
came round to March’s to say that he had got Lin- 
dau’s address from Conrad, and had looked him up 
at his lodgings. 

‘Well, there isn’t so much bricabrac there, quite, 
as Mrs. Green left you; but Pve made it all right 
with Lindau, as far as ’m concerned. I told him 
I didn’t know when I spoke that way, and I honored 
him for sticking to his ‘ brincibles’; Z don’t believe 
in his brincibles; and we wept on each other’s 
necks—at least, he did. Dogged if he didn’t kiss 
me before I knew what he was up to. He said I 
was his chenerous yong friendt, and he begged my 


V. 


“You see,” Fulkerson explained, “I find that the 
old man has got an idea of his own about that 
banquet, and I guess there’s some sense in it. He 
wants to have a preliminary little dinner, where we 
can talk the thing up first—half a dozen of us; and 
he wants to give us the dinner at his house. Well, 
that’s no harm. I don’t believe the old man ever 
gave a dinner, and he’d like to show off a little; 
there’s a good deal of human nature in the old 
man, after all. He thought of you, of course, and 
Colonel Woodburn, and Beaton, and me at the foot 
of the table; and Conrad; and I suggested Ken- 
dricks—he’s such a nice little chap; and the old 
man himself brought up the idea of Lindau. He 
said you told him something about him, and he 
asked why couldn’t we have him, too; and I jumped 
at it.” 

‘Have Lindau to dinner ?” asked March. 

‘Certainly; why not? Father Dryfoos hag a no- 
tion of paying the old fellow a compliment for what 
he done for the country. There won’t be any trou- 
ble about it. You can sit alongside of him, and cut 
up his meat for him, and help him to things—” 

“Yes, but it won’t do, Fulkerson! I don’t believe 
Lindau ever had on a dress-coat in his life, and I 
don’t believe his ‘brincibles’ would let him wear 
one.” . | 

‘Well, neither had Dryfoos, for the matter of 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


barton if he had said anything to wound me. I 


tell you it was an affecting scene, March; and rats 
enough round in that old barracks where he lives 
to fit out a first-class case of delirium tremens. 
What does he stay there for? He’s not obliged 
to?” 

Lindau’s reasons, as March repeated them, affect- 
ed Fulkerson as deliciously comical; but after that 
he confined his pleasantries at the office to Beaton: 
and Conrad Dryfoos, or, as he said, he spent the- 
rest of the summer in keeping Lindau smoothed up. 

It is doubtful if Lindau altogether liked this as. 
well. Perhaps he missed the occasions Fulkerson 
used to give him of bursting out against the mill- 
ionaires; and he could not well go on denouncing 
as the slafe of gabidal a man who had behaved to: 
him as Fulkerson had done, though Fulkerson’s ser- 
vile relations to capital had been in no wise changed 
by his nople gonduct. 

Their relations continued to wear this irksome: 
character of mutual forbearance; and when Dry- 
foos returned in October and Fulkerson revived the 
question of that dinner in celebration of the suc- 
cess of Hvery Other Week, he carried his complai- 
sance to an extreme that alarmed March for the- 
consequences. 


that. He’s as high-principled as old Pan-Electric 
himself, when it comes to a dress-coat,” said Ful- 
kerson. “ We're all going to go in business dress; 
the old man stipulated for that.” 

“Tt isn’t the dress-coat alone,” March resumed. 
“Lindau and Dryfoos wouldn’t get on. You know 
they’re opposite poles in everything. You mustn’t 
do it. Dryfoos will be sure to say something to 
outrage Lindau’s ‘ brincibles,’ and there’ll be an ex- 
plosion. It’s all well enough for Dryfoos to feel 
grateful to Lindau, and his wish to honor him does 
him credit; but to have Lindau to dinner isn’t the 
way. At the best, the old fellow would be very 
unhappy in such a house; he would have a bad 
conscience ; and I should be sorry to have him feel 
that he’d been recreant to his ‘brincibles’; they’re- 
about all he’s got, and whatever we think of them, 
we’re bound to respect his fidelity to them.” March 
warmed toward Lindau in taking this view of him. 
“T should feel ashamed if I didn’t protest against 
his being put in a false position. After all, he’s 
my old friend, and I shouldn’t like to have him do. 
himself injustice if he is a crank.” 

‘* Of course,” said Fulkerson, with some trouble in 
his face. “I appreciate your feeling. But there 
ain’t any danger,” he added, buoyantly. ‘ Anyhow, 
you spoke too late, as the Irishman said to the 


chicken when he swallowed him in a fresh egg. . 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


T’ve asked Lindau, and he’s accepted with blay- 
gare; that’s what he says.” 

March made no other comment than a shrug. 

“You'll see,” Fulkerson continued, “it ’ll go off 
all right. Ill engage to make it, and I won’t hold 
anybody else responsible.” 

In the course of his married life March had 
learned not to censure the irretrievable; but this 
was just what his wife had not learned; and she 
poured out so much astonishment at what Fulker- 
son had done, and so much disapproval, that March 
began to palliate the situation a little. 

“ After all, it isn’t a question of life and death; 
and, if it were, I don’t see how it’s to be helped 
now.” 

“Qh, it’s not to be pope. now. But I am sur- 
prised at Mr. Fulkerson.” 

“Well, Fulkerson has his moments of being 

merely human, too.” 

Mrs. March mould not deign a direct defence of 
her favorite. ‘‘ Well, ’m glad there are not to be 
ladies.” 

“T don’t know. Dryfoos thought of having la- 
dies, but it seems your infallible Fulkerson over- 
ruled him. Their presence might have kept Lin- 
dau and our host in bounds.” 

Tt had become part of the Marches’ conjugal joke 
for him to pretend that she could allow nothing 
wrong in Fulkerson, and he now laughed with a 
mocking air of having expected it when she said: 
“Well, then, if Mr. Fulkerson says he will see that 
it all comes out right, I suppose you must trust his 
tact. I wouldn’t trust yours, Basil. The first 
wrong step was taken when Mr. Lindau was asked 
to help on the magazine.” 

“ Well, it was your infallible Fulkerson that took 
the step, or at least suggested it. I’m happy to say 
Thad totally forgotten my early friend.” 

Mrs. March was daunted and silenced for a mo- 
ment. Then she said:- “‘ Oh, Cn Ade You know 
well enough he did it to please you.” 

“Pm very glad he didn’t do it to please you, 
Isabel,” said her husband, with affected seriousness. 
“Though perhaps he did.” 

He began to look at the humorous aspect of 
the affair, which it certainly had, and to comment on 
the singular incongruities which Hvery Other Week 
was destined to involve at every moment of its 
career. “I wonder if I’m mistaken in supposing 
that no other periodical was ever like it. Perhaps 
all periodicals are like it. But I don’t believe 
there’s another publication in New York that could 
bring together, in honor of itself, a fraternity and 
equality crank like poor old Lindau, and a belated 
sociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent 

speculator like old Dryfoos, and a humanitarian 
dreamer like young Dryfoos, and a sentimentalist 
like me, and a nondescript like Beaton, and a pure 
advertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society 


lit 


spirit like Kendricks. If we could only allow one 
another to talk uninterruptedly all the time, the 
dinner would be the greatest success in the world, 
and we should come home full of the highest 
mutual respect. But I suspect we can’t manage 
that—even your infallible Fulkerson couldn’t work 
it—and I’m afraid that there’ll be some listening 
that ’ll spoil the pleasure of the time.” 

March was so well pleased with this view of the 
case that he suggested the idea involved to Fulker- 
son. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not to laugh 
at another man’s joke, but he laughed a little rue- 
fully, and he seemed worn with more than one kind 
of care in the interval that passed between the pres- 
ent time and the night of the dinner. 

Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for ad- 
vice concerning the scope and nature of the dinner, 
but he received the advice suspiciously, and con- 
tested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious 
stupidity. Fulkerson said that when it came to the 
point he would rather have had the thing, as he 
called it, at Delmonico’s or some other restaurant ; 
but en he found that Dryfoos’s pride was bound 
up in having it at his own house, he gave way to him. 
Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook to prepare 
the dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him that this 
would not do; he must have it from a caterer. 
Then Dryfoos wanted his maids to wait at table, but 
Fulkerson convinced him that this would be incon- 
gruous at a man’s dinner. It was decided that the 
dinner should be sent in from Frescobaldi’s, and 
Dryfoos went with Fulkerson to discuss it with the 
caterer. He insisted upon having everything ex: 
plained to him, and the reason for having it, and not 
something else in its place; and he treated Ful- 
kerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league to 
impose upon him. There were moments when Ful- 
kerson saw the varnish of professional politeness. 
cracking on the Neapolitan’s volcanic surface, and 
caught a glimpse of the lava fires of the cook’s na- 
ture beneath; he trembled for Dryfoos, who was. 
walking roughshod over him in the security of an 
American who had known how to make his money, 
and must know how to spend it; but he got him 
safely away at last, and gave Frescobaldi a wink of 
sympathy for his shrug of exhaustion as they 
turned to leave him. 

It was at first a relief and then an anxiety with 
Fulkerson that Lindau did not come about after 
accepting the invitation to dinner, until he appear- 
ed at Dryfoos’s house, prompt to the hour. There 
was, to be sure, nothing to bring him; but Fulker- 
son was uneasily aware that Dryfoos expected to 
meet him at the office, and perhaps receive some 
verbal acknowledgment of the honor done him, 
Dryfoos, he could see, thought he was doing all 
his invited guests a favor; and while he stood in 
a certain awe of them as people of much greater 
social experience than himself, regarded them with 


112 


a kind of contempt, as people who were going to 
have a better dinner at his house than they could 
ever afford to have at their own. He had finally 
not spared expense upon it; after pushing Fresco- 
baldi to the point of eruption with his misgivings 
and suspicions at the first interview, he had gone 
to him a second time alone, and told him not to 
let the money stand between him and anything he 
would like to do. In the absence of Frescobaldi’s 
fellow-conspirator he restored himself in the cater- 
er’s esteem by adding whatever he suggested; and 
Fulkerson, after trembling for the old man’s nig- 
gardliness, was now afraid of a fantastic profusion 
in the feast. Dryfoos had reduced the scale of 
the banquet as regarded the number of guests, but 
a confusing remembrance of what Fulkerson had 
wished to do remained with him in part, and up to 
the day of the dinner he dropped in at Frescobaldi’s 
and ordered more dishes and more of them. He 
impressed the Italian as an American original of a 
novel kind; and when he asked Fulkerson how Dry- 
foos had made his money, and learned that it was 
mainly in natural gas, he made note of some of his 
eccentric tastes as peculiarities that were to be ca- 
ressed in any future natural gas millionaire who 
might fall into his hands. He did not begrudge 
the time he had to give in explaining to Dryfoos 
the relation of the different wines to the different 
dishes; Dryfoos was apt to substitute a costlier 
wine where he could for a cheaper one, and he gave 
Frescobaldi carte blanche for the dceoration of the 
table with pieces of artistic confectionery. Among 
these the caterer designed one for a surprise to his 
patron and a delicate recognition of the source of 
his wealth, which he found Dryfoos very willing to 
talk about, when he intimated that he knew what it 
was, 

Dryfoos left it to Fulkerson to invite the guests, 
and he found ready acceptance of his politeness 
from Kendricks, who rightly regarded the dinner as 
a part of the Hvery Other Week business, and was 
too sweet and kind-hearted, anyway, not to seem 
very glad to come. March was a matter of course : 
but in Colonel Woodburn Fulkerson encountered a 
reluctance which embarrassed him the more because 
he was conscious of having, for motives of his own, 
rather strained a point in suggesting the Colonel to 
Dryfoos as a fit subject for invitation. There had 
been only one of the Colonel’s articles printed, as 
yet, and though it had made a sensation in its way, 
and started the talk about that number, still it did 
not fairly constitute him a member of the staff, or 
even entitle him to recognition as a regular con- 
tributor. Fulkerson felt so sure of pleasing him 
with Dryfoos’s message that he delivered it in full 
family council at the widow’s. His daughter re- 
ceived it with all the enthusiasm that Fulkerson 
had hoped for, but the Colonel said, stiffly, ‘““I have 
not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dryfoos.” Miss 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Woodburn appeared ready to fall upon him at this, 
but controlled herself, as if aware that filial au- 
thority had its limits, and pressed her lips together 
without saying anything. 

“Yes, I know,” Fulkerson admitted. ‘But it 
isn’t a usual case. Mr. Dryfoos don’t go in much 
for the conventionalities; I reckon he don’t know 
much about ’em, come to boil it down; and he 
hoped”—here Fulkerson felt the necessity of in- 
venting a little—“ that you would excuse any want 
of ceremony; it’s to be such an informal affair, 
anyway ; we’re all going in business dress, and there 
ain’t going to be any ladies. He’d have come him- 
self to ask you, but he’s a kind of a bashful old 
fellow. It’s all right, Colonel Woodburn.” 

“T take it that it is, sir,” said the Colonel, cour- 
teously, but with unabated state, “coming from you. 
But in these matters we have no right to burden 
our friends with our decisions.” 

“Of course, of course,” said Fulkerson, feeling 
that he had been delicately told to mind his own 
business. 

“I understand,” the Colonel went on, “the rela. 
tion that Mr. Dryfoos bears to the periodical in 
which you have done me the hono’ to print my pa- 
pah, but this is a question of passing the bounds of 
a purely business connection, and of eating the salt 
of a man whom you do not definitely know to be a 
gentleman.” 

‘“‘Mah goodness!” his daughter broke in. 
you bah your own salt with his money—” 

“Tt is supposed that I earn his money before I 
buy my salt with it,” returned her father, severely. 
“And in these times, when money is got in heaps, 
through the natural decay of our nefarious commer- 
cialism, it behooves a gentleman to be scrupulous 
that the hospitality offered him is not the profusion 
of a thief with his booty. I don’t say that Mr. Dry- 
foos’s good-fortune is not honest. I simply say that 
I know nothing about it, and that I should prefer 
to know something before I sat down at his board.” 

“You're all right, Colonel,” said Fulkerson, “and 
so is Mr. Dryfoos. I give you my word that there 
are no flies on his personal integrity, if that’s what 
you mean. He’s hard, and he’d push an advantage, 
but I don’t believe he would take an unfair one. 
He’s speculated and made money every time, but I 
never heard of his wrecking a railroad, or belonging 
to any swindling company or any grinding monop- 
oly. He does chance it in stocks, but he’s always 
played on the square, if you call stocks gambling.” 

“May I think this over till morning ?” asked the 
Colonel. 

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Fulkerson, eager- 
ly. “I don’t know as there’s any hurry.” 

Miss Woodburn found a chance to murmur to 
him before he went: “He'll come. And Ah’m so 
much oblahged, Mr. Fulkerson. Ah jost know it’s 
all you’ doing, and it will give papa a chance to 


iTS If 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


toak to some new people, and get away from us 
evahlastin’ women for once.” 
““T don’t see why any one should want to do that,”’ 
said Fulkerson, with grateful gallantry. “But Dll 
be dogged,” he said to March when he told him 
about this odd experience, “if I ever expected to 
find Colonel Woodburn on old Lindau’s ground. He 
did come round handsomely this morning at break- 
fast, and apologized for taking time to think the 
invitation over before he accepted. ‘You under- 
stand,’ he says, ‘that if it had been to the table 
of some friend not so prosperous as Mr. Dryfoos— 
your friend Mr. March, for instance—it would have 
been sufficient to know that he was your friend. 
But in these days it is a duty that a gentleman 
owes himself to consider whether he wishes to know 


113 


a rich man or not. The chances of making mon- 
ey disreputably are so great that the chances are 
against a man who has made money if he’s made 
a great deal of it.’” 

March listened with a face of ironical insinuation. 
“That was very good; and he seems to have had 
a good deal of confidence in your patience and in 
your sense of his importance to the occasion—” 

‘No, no,” Fulkerson protested, “there’s none of 
that kind of thing about the Colonel. I told him 
to take time to think it over; he’s the simplest- 
hearted old fellow in the world.” 

“T should say so. After all, he didn’t give any 
reason he had for accepting. But perhaps the young 
lady had the reason.” 

‘“‘Pshaw, March !” said Fulkerson. 


ial 


So far as the Dryfoos family was concerned, the 

‘dinner might as well have been given at Fresco- 
_ baldi’s rooms. None of the ladies appeared. Mrs. 
Dryfoos was glad to escape to her own chamber, 
where she sat before an autumnal fire, shaking her 
head and talking to herself at times, with the fore- 
boding of evil which old women like her make part 
of their religion. The girls stood just out of sight 
at the head of the stairs, and disputed which guest 
it was at each arrival; Mrs. Mandel had gone to her 
room to write letters, after beseeching them not to 
stand there. When Kendricks came, Christine gave 
Mela a little pinch, equivalent to a little mocking 
shriek; for, on the ground of his long talk with 
Mela at Mrs. Horn’s, in the absence of any other 
admirer, they based a superstition of his interest in 
her; when Beaton came, Mela returned the pinch, 
but awkwardly, so that it hurt, and then Christine 
involuntarily struck her. 

Frescobaldi’s men were in possession everywhere: 
they had turned the cook out of her kitchen and 
the waitress out of her pantry; the reluctant Irish- 
man at the door was supplemented by a vivid Ital- 
jan, who spoke French with the guests, and said 
“Bien, monsieur,” and “Toute suite,” and “Meret!” 
to all, as he took their hats and coats, and effused 
a hospitality that needed no language but the gleam 
of his eyes and teeth and the play of his eloquent 
hands. From his professional dress-coat, lustrous 
with the grease spotted on it at former dinners and 
‘parties, they passed to the frocks of the elder and 
younger Dryfoos in the drawing-room, which as- 
sumed informality for the affair, but did not put 
their wearers wholly at their. ease. The father’s 
oat was of black broadcloth, and he wore it un- 
buttoned; the skirts were long, and the sleeves 
came down to his knuckles; he shook hands with 
his guests, and the same dryness seemed to be in 


8 


his palm and throat, as he huskily asked each to 
take a chair. Conrad’s coat was of modern texture 
and cut, and was buttoned about him as if it con- 
cealed a bad conscience within its lapels; he met 
March with his entreating smile, and he seemed no 
more capable of coping with the situation than hig 
father. They both waited for Fulkerson, who went 
about and did his best to keep life in the party 
during the half-hour that passed before they sat 
down at dinner, Beaton stood gloomily aloof, as if 
waiting to be approached on the right basis before 
yielding an inch of his ground; Colonel Woodburn, 
awaiting the moment when he could sally out on 
his hobby, kept himself intrenched within the dig- 
nity of a gentleman, and examined askance the fig- 
ure of old Lindau as he stared about the room, with 
his fine head up, and his empty sleeve dangling over 
his wrist. March felt obliged to him for wearing 
a new coat in the midst of that hostile luxury, and 
he was glad to see Dryfoos make up to him and 
begin to talk with him, as if he wished to show 
him particular respect, though it might have been 
because he was less afraid of him than of the others. 
He heard Lindau saying, “Boat, the name is Choar- 
man ?” and Dryfoos beginning to explain his Penn- 
sylvania Dutch origin, and he suffered himself, with 
a sigh of relief, to fall into talk with Kendricks, 
who was always pleasant; he was willing to talk 
about something besides himself, and had no opin- 
ions that he was not ready to hold in abeyance for 
the time being out of kindness to others. In that 
group of impassioned individualities, March felt him 
a refuge and comfort—with his harmless dilettante 
intention of some day writing a novel, and his belief 
that he was meantime collecting material for it. 
Fulkerson, while breaking the ice for the whole 
company, was mainly engaged in keeping Colonel 
Woodburn thawed out. He took Kendricks away 


114 


from March and presented him to the Colonel as a 
person who, like himself, was looking into social 
conditions; he put one hand on Kendricks’s shoul- 
der, and one on the Colonel’s, and made some flat- 
tering joke, apparently at the expense of the young 
fellow, and then left them. March heard Kendricks 
protest in vain, and the Colonel say, gravely: “I do 
not wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They 
constitute a problem which society must solve or 
which will dissolve society,” and he knew from that 
formula, which the Colonel had once used with him, 
that he was laying out a road for the exhibition of 
the hobby’s paces later. 

Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned 
toward Conrad Dryfoos, and said, “If we don’t get 
this thing going pretty soon, it "Il be the death of 
me,” and just then Frescobaldi’s butler came in and 
announced to Dryfoos that dinner was served. The 
old man looked toward Fulkerson with a troubled 
glance, as if he did not know what to do; he made 
a gesture to touch Lindau’s elbow. Fulkerson call- 
ed out, ‘‘ Here’s Colonel Woodburn, Mr. Dryfoos,” as 
if Dryfoos were looking for him; and he set the ex. 
ample of what he was to do by taking Lindau’s arm 
himself. “Mr. Lindau is going to sit at my end 
of the table, alongside of March. Stand not upon 
the order of your going, gentlemen, but fall in at 
once.” He contrived to get Dryfoos and the Colonel 
before him, and he let March follow with Kendricks. 
Conrad came last with Beaton, who had been turn- 
ing over the music at the piano, and chafing inward- 
ly at the whole affair. At the table Colonel Wood- 
burn was placed on Dryfoos’s right, and March on 
his left. March sat on Fulkerson’s right, with Lin- 
dau next him; and the young men occupied the 
other seats. 

“Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau,” said Ful- 
kerson, ‘‘so you can begin to put Apollinaris in his 
champagne glass at the right moment; you know 
his little weakness of old; sorry to say it’s grown 
on him.” 

March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Ful- 
kerson’s wish to start the gavety, and Lindau patted 
him on the shoulder. ‘I know hiss veakness. If 
he liges a class of vine, it iss begause his loaf in- 
gludes efen hiss enemy, as Shakespeare galled 
it.” 

“ Ah, but Shakespeare couldn’t have been think- 
ing of champagne,” said Kendricks. 

“‘T suppose, sir,” Colonel Woodburn interposed, 
with lofty courtesy, “champagne could hardly have 
been known in his day.” 

“T suppose not, Colonel,” returned the younger 
man, deferentially. ‘He seemed to think that sack 
and sugar might be a fault; but he didn’t mention 
champagne.” 

‘Perhaps he felt there was no question about 
that,” suggested Beaton, who then felt that he had 
not done himself justice in the sally. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“JT wonder just when champagne did come in,” 
said March. 

‘“‘T know when it ought to come in,” said Fulker- 
son. ‘Before the soup!” 

They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of 
drinking champagne out of tumblers every day, as 
men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily; he did 
not quite understand the allusions, though he knew 
what Shakespeare was, well enough; Conrad’s face: 
expressed a gentle deprecation of joking on such a 
subject, but he said nothing. 

The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The 
young men tossed the ball back and forth; they 
made some wild shots, but they kept it going, and 
they laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed 
Colonel Woodburn’s tongue; he became very com- 
panionable with the young fellows; with the feeling 
that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope, 
he praised Scott and Addison as the only authors 
fit to form the minds of gentlemen. 

Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the 
name of Flaubert as a master of style. ‘Style, you 
know,” he added, “is the man.” 

“Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir,” the 
Colonel assented; he wondered who Flaubert was. 

Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupassant; he 
said these were the masters. He recited some lurid 
verses from Baudelaire ; Lindau pronounced them a 
disgrace to human nature, and gave a passage from 
Victor Hugo on Louis Napoleon, with his heavy 
German accent, and then he quoted Schiller. ‘* Ach, 
boat that iss peaudifool! Not zo?” he demanded 
of March. 

“ Yes, beautiful; but, of course, you know I think 
there’s nobody like Heine !” 

Lindau threw back his great old head and laugh- 
ed, showing a want of teeth under his mustache. 
He put his hand on March’s back. “This poy—he 
wass a poy den—wass so gracy to pekin reading 
Heine that he gommence with the tictionary bevore: 
he knows any crammar, and ve bick it out vort by 
vort togeder.” 

“He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh, 
Lindau ?” asked Fulkerson, burlesquing the old 
man’s accent, with an impudent wink that made 
Lindau himself laugh. ‘“ Back in the dark ages, I 
mean, there in Indianapolis. Just how long ago 
did you old codgers meet there, anyway ?” Fulker- 
son saw the restiveness in Dryfoos’s eye at the 
purely literary course the talk had taken; he had 
intended it to lead up that way to business, to Avery. 
Other Week ; but he saw that it was leaving Dry- 
foos too far out, and he wished to get it on the 
personal ground, where everybody is at home. 

“Tiedt me zee,’ mused Lindau. ‘ Wass it in 
fifty-nine or zixty, Passil? Idt wass a year or dwo 
pefore the war proke oudt, anyway.” 

‘‘ Those were exciting times,” said Dryfoos, mak- 
ing his first entry into the general talk. “I went 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


down to Indianapolis with the first company from 
our place, and I saw the red shirts pouring in every- 
where. They had a song— 

‘Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double 

trouble, 

For we’re bound for the land of Canaan.’ 

The fellows locked arms and went singin’ it up and 
down four or five abreast in the moonlight; crowded 
everybody else off the sidewalk.” 

“T rememper, I rememper,” said Lindau, nodding 
his head slowly up and down. ‘A coodt many off 
them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan, 
Mr. Dryfoos.” 

“You're right, Mr. Lindau. But I reckon it was 
worth it—the country we’ve got now. Here, young 
man!” He caught the arm of the waiter who was 
going round with the champagne bottle. ‘Fill up 
Mr. Lindau’s glass, there. I want to drink the health 
of those old times with him. MHere’s to your empty 
sleeve, Mr. Lindau. God bless it! No offence to 
you, Colonel Woodburn,” said Dryfoos, turning to 
‘him before he drank. 

“ Not at all, sir, not at all,” said the Colonel. 
will drink with you, if you will permit me.” 

“We'll all drink—standing,” cried Fulkerson. 
“Help March to get up, somebody! Fill high the 
bowl with Samian Apollinaris for Coonrod! Now, 
then, hurrah for Lindau!” 

They cheered, and hammered on the table with 
the butts of their knife handles. Lindau remained 
seated. The tears came into his eyes; he said, “I 
thank you, chendlemen,” and hiccoughed. 

“Td a’ went into the war myself,” said Dryfoos, 
“but I was raisin’ a family of young children, and 
I didn’t see how I could leave my farm. But I 
helped to fill up the quota at every call, and when 
the volunteering stopped I went round with the sub- 
scription paper myself; and we offered as good 
bounties as any in the State. My substitute was 
killed in one of the last skirmishes—in fact, after 
Lee’s surrender—and I’ve took care of his family, 
more or less, ever since.” 

“ By-the-way, March,” said Fulkerson, “ what sort 
of an idea would it be to have a good war story— 
might be a serial—in the magazine? The war has 
never fully panned out in fiction yet. It was used 
a good deal just after it was over, and then it was 
dropped. I think it’s time to take it up again. I 
believe it would be a card.” 

It was running in March’s mind that Dryfoos had 
an old rankling shame in his heart for not having 
gone into the war, and that he had often made that 
explanation of his course without having ever been 
Satisfied with it. He felt sorry for him; the fact 
seemed pathetic; it suggested a dormant nobleness 
in the man. 

_ Beaton was saying to Fulkerson, “ You might get 
a series of sketches by substitutes; the substitutes 
hayen’t been much heard from in the war literature, 


OT 


115 


How would ‘ The Autobiography of a Substitute’ do ? 

You might follow him up to the moment he was 

killed in the other man’s place, and inquire whether 

he had any right to the feelings of a hero when he 

was only hired in the place of one. Might call it 
The Career of a Deputy Hero.’” 

“TI fancy,” said March, “that there was a great 
deal: of mixed motive in the men who went into 
the war as well as in those who kept out of it. 
We canonize all that died or suffered in it, but 
some of them must have been self-seeking and low- 
minded, like men in other vocations.” He found 
himself saying this in Dryfoos’s behalf. The old 
man looked at him gratefully at first, he thought, 
and then suspiciously. . 

Lindau turned his head toward him and said: 
“You are righdt, Passil; you are righdt. I haf 
zeen on the fieldt of pattle the voarst eggsipitions of 
human paseness—chelousy, fanity, ecodistice bridte. 
I haf zeen men in the face off death itself gofferned 
by motifes as low as—as pusiness motifes.” 

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “it would be a grand 
thing for Every Other Week if we could get some 
of those ideas worked up into a series. It would 
make a lot of talk.” 

Colonel Woodburn ignored him in saying, “I 
think, Major Lindau—” 

‘“‘ High brifate; prefet gorporal,” the old man in- 
terrupted, in rejection of the title. 

Kendricks laughed and said, with a glance of ap- 
preciation at Lindau, “ Brevet corporal is good.” 

Colonel Woodburn frowned a little, and passed 
over the joke. ‘I think Mr. Lindau is right. Such 
exhibitions were common to both sides, though if 
you gentlemen will pardon me for saying so, I think 
they were less frequent on ours. We were fight- 
ing more immediately for existence; we were fewer 
than you were, and we knew it; we felt more in- 
tensely that if each were not for all, then none was 
for any.” 

The Colonel’s words made their impression. Dry- 
foos said, with authority, ‘‘ That is so.” 

“Colonel Woodburn,” Fulkerson called out, ‘if 
you'll work up those ideas into a short paper—say 
three thousand words—I’ll engage to make March 
take it.” ; 

The Colonel went on without replying: ‘‘ But Mr. 
Lindau is right in characterizing some of the mo- 
tives that led men to the cannon’s mouth as no 
higher than business motives, and his comparison 
is the most forcible that he could have used. I 
was very much struck by it.” 

The hobby was out, the Colonel was in the saddle 
with so firm a seat that no effort sufficed to dis- 
lodge him. The dinner went on from course to 
course with barbaric profusion, and from time to 
time Fulkerson tried to bring the talk back to Every 
Other Week. But perhaps because that was only 
the ostensible and not the real object of the dinner, 


z 


116 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


which was to bring a number of men together un- 
der Dryfoos’s roof, and make them the witnesses 
of his splendor, make them feel the power of his 
wealth, Fulkerson’s attempts failed. The Colonel 
showed how commercialism was the poison at the 
heart of our national life; how we began as a sim- 
ple, agricultural people, who had fled to these shores 
with the instinct, divinely implanted, of building a 
state such as the sun never shone upon before; 
how we had conquered the wilderness and the sav- 
age; how we had flung off, in our struggle with the 
mother country, the trammels of tradition and pre- 
cedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to the 
practice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of 
commercialism had stolen insidiously upon us, and 
the infernal impulse of competition had embroiled 
us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing 
the worst passions of our nature, and teaching us 
to trick and betray and destroy one another in the 
strife for money, till now that impulse had ex- 
hausted itself, and we found competition gone, and 
the whole economic problem in the hands of mo- 
nopolies —the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar 
Trust, the Rubber Trust, and what not. And now 
what was the next thing? Affairs could not re- 
main as they were; it was impossible; and what 
was the next thing ? 

The company listened for the main part silently. 
Dryfoos tried to grasp the idea of commercialism 
as the Colonel seemed to hold it; he conceived of 
it as something like the dry-goods business on a 
vast scale, and he knew he had never been in that. 
He did not like to hear competition called infernal ; 
he had always supposed it was something sacred ; 
but he approved of what Colonel Woodburn said of 
the Standard Oil Company; it was all true; the 
Standard Oil had squeezed Dryfoos once, and made 
him sell it a lot of oil wells by putting down the 
price of oil so low in that region that he lost mon- 
ey on every barrel he pumped. 

All the rest listened silently, except Lindau; at 
every point the Colonel made against the present 
condition of things he said more and more fiercely, 
“You are righdt, you are righdt.” His eyes 
glowed, his hand played with his knife hilt. When 
the Colonel demanded, “And what is the next 
thing?” he threw himself forward, and repeated: 
“Yes, sir! What is the next thing ?” 

“Natural gas, by thunder!” shouted Fulkerson. 

One of the waiters had profited by Lindau’s pos- 
ture to lean over him and put down in tae middle 
of the table a structure in white sugar. It expressed 
Frescobaldi’s conception of a derrick, and a touch 
of nature had been added in the flame of brandy, 
which burned luridly up from a small pit in the 
centre of the base, and represented the gas in com- 
bustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson 
burst into a roar of laughter with the words that 
recognized Frescobaldi’s personal tribute to Dry- 


foos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, 
while he explained the work of sinking a gas well, 
as he had already explained it to Frescobaldi. In 
the midst of his lecture he caught sight of the cater- 
er himself, where he stood in the pantry doorway, 
smiling with an artist’s anxiety for the effect of his 
masterpiece. 

“Come in, come in, Frescobaldi! We want to 
congratulate you,” Fulkerson called to him. “ Here, 
gentlemen! Here’s Frescobaldi’s health.” 

They all drank; and Frescobaldi, smiling brill- 
iantly and rubbing his hands as he bowed right and 
left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos: “ You are 
please; no? You like?” 

“First-rate, first-rate!” said the old man; but 
when the Italian had bowed himself out and his 
guests had sunk into their seats again, he said, dry- 
ly, to Fulkerson, “I reckon they didn’t have to tor- 
pedo that well, or the derrick wouldn’t look quite so 
nice and clean.” 

“Yes,” Fulkerson answered; “and that ain’t 
quite the style—that little wiggly-waggly blue flame 
—that the gas acts when you touch off a good vein 
of it. This might do for weak gas;” and he went 
on to explain: “They call it weak gas when they 
tap it two or three hundred feet down; and any- 
body can sink a well in his back yard and get 
enough gas to light and heat his house. I remem- 
ber one fellow that had it blazing up from a pipe 
through a flower bed, just like a jet of water from 
a fountain. My, my, my! You fel—you gentle. 
men ought to go out and see that country, all of you. 
Wish we could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryfoos, and 
let ’em see how it works! Mind that one you tor- 
pedoed for me? You know, when they sink a 
well,” he went on to the company, “they can’t al- 
ways most generally sometimes tell whether they’re 
goin’ to get gas or oil or salt-water. Why, when 
they first began to bore for salt-water out on the 
Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century, 
they used to get gas now and then, and then they 
considered it a failure; they called a gas well a 
blower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn’t 
ripe for gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes 
till they get half-way to China, and don’t seem to 
strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put 
a dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it. 
They have a little bar of iron that they call a Go- 
devil, and they just drop it down on the business end 
of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if you 
please! You hear a noise, and in about half a 
minute you begin to see one, and it begins to rain 
oil and mud and salt-water and rocks and pitch- 
forks and adoptive citizens; and when it clears up 
the derrick’s painted—got a coat on that ’ll wear in 
any climate. That’s what our honored host meant. 
Generally get some visiting lady, when there’s one 
round, to drop the Go-devil. But that day we had 
to put up with Conrad here. They offered to let me 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


drop it, but I declined. I told ’em I hadn’t much 
practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate 
business, and I wasn’t very well myself, anyway. 
Astonishing,” Fulkerson continued, with the air of 
relieving his explanation by aw anecdote, “how reck- 
less they get using dynamite when they’re tor- 
pedoing wells. We stopped at one place where a 
fellow was handling the cartridges pretty freely, and 
Mr. Dryfoos happened to caution him a little, and 
that ass came up with one of ’em in his hand, and 
began to pound it on the buggy wheel to show us 
how safe it was. I turned green, I was so scared; 
but Mr. Dryfoos kept his color, and kind of coaxed 
the fellow till he quit. You could see he was the 
fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he’d keep 
on hammering that cartridge, just to show that it 
wouldn’t explode, till he blew you into Kingdom 
Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos 
drove up to his foreman. ‘Pay Sheney off, and 
discharge him on the spot,’ says he. ‘He’s too 
safe a man to have round; he knows altogether 
too much about dynamite.’ I never saw anybody 
so cool.” 

Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Ful- 
kerson’s flattery, and without lifting it, turned his 
eyes toward Colonel Woodburn. ‘I had all sorts of 
men to deal with in developing my property out 
there, but I had very little trouble with them, gen- 
erally speaking.” 

“Ah, ah! you foundt the laboring-man reasonable 
—dractable—tocile ?” Lindau put in. 

“Yes, generally speaking,’ Dryfoos answered. 
“They mostly knew which side of their bread was 
buttered. I did have one little difficulty at one time. 
Tt happened to be when Mr. Fulkerson was out theré. 
Some of the men tried to form a union—” 

“No, no!” cried Fulkerson. ‘Let me tell that! 
I know you wouldn’t do yourself justice, Mr. Dry- 
foos, and I want ’em to know how a strike can be 
managed, if you take it in time. You see, some 
of those fellows got a notion that there ought to 
be a union among the working-men to keep up 
wages and dictate to the employers, and Mr. Dry- 
foos’s foreman was the ringleader in the business. 
They understood pretty well that as soon as he 
found it out that foreman would walk the plank, 
and so they watched out till they thought they had 
Mr. Dryfoos just where they wanted him—every- 
thing on the keen jump, and every man worth his 
weight in diamonds—and then they come to him, 
and told him to sign a promise to keep that foreman 
_ to the end of the season, or till he was through with 
the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, 
under penalty of having them all knock off. Mr. 
Dryfoos smelt a mice, but he couldn’t tell where the 
mice was; he saw that they did have him, and 
he signed, of course. There wasn’t anything really 
' against the fellow, anyway ; he was a first-rate man, 
and he did his duty every time; only he’d got some 


117 


of those ideas into his head, and they turned it. 
Mr. Dryfoos signed, and then he laid low.” 

March saw Lindau listening with a mounting in- 
tensity, and heard him murmur in German, “ Shame- 
ful! shameful!” 

Fulkerson went on: “ Well, it wasn’t long before 
they began to show their hand, but Mr. Dryfoos kept 
dark. He agreed to everything; there never was 
such an.obliging capitalist before; there wasn’t a 
thing they asked of him that he didn’t do, with the 
greatest of pleasure, and all went merry as a mar- 
riage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh 
men marched into the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, 
under the escort of a dozen Pinkertons with rifles at 
half-cock, and about fifty fellows found themselves 
out of a job. You never saw such a mad set.” 

‘‘ Pretty neat,” said Kendricks, who looked at the 
affair purely from an esthetic point of view. ‘Such 
a coup as that would tell tremendously in a play.” 

‘That was vile treason,” said Lindau, in German, 
to March. ‘“He’s an infamous traitor! I cannot 
stay here. I must go.” 

He struggled to rise, while March held him by the 
coat, and implored him under his voice, “‘ For Hea- 
ven’s sake, don’t, Lindau! You owe it to yourself 
not to make a scene, if you come here.” Something 
in it all affected him comically; he could not help 
laughing. 

The others were discussing the matter, and seem- 
ed not to have noticed Lindau, who controlled him- 
self, and sighed: “You are right. I must have 
patience.” 

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, “ Pity your Pink- 
ertons couldn’t have given them a few shots before 
they left.” 

‘‘No, that wasn’t necessary,” said Dryfoos. “I 
succeeded in breaking up the union. I entered into 
an agreement with other parties not to employ any 
man who would not swear that he was non-union. 
If they had attempted violence, of course they could 
have been shot. But there was no fear of that. 
Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut 
each other’s throats in the long-run.” 

‘But sometimes,” said Colonel Woodburn, who 
had been watching for a chance to mount his 
hobby again, “ they make a good deal of trouble first. 
How was it in the great railroad strike of 772” _ 

“Well, I guess there was a little trouble that - 
time, Colonel,” said Fulkerson. ‘But the men that 
undertake to override the laws and paralyze the 
industries of a country like this generally get left 
in the end.” 

“Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, 
always. But it’s the exceptional that is apt to hap- 
pen, as well as the unexpected. And a little re- 
flection will convince any gentleman here that 
there is always a danger of the exceptional in your 
system. The fact is, those fellows have the game 
in their own hands already. A strike of the whole 


118 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


body of the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would 
starve out the entire Atlantic seaboard in a week; 
labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given 
points, and your government couldn’t move a man 
over the roads without the help of the engineers.” 

‘That is so,” said Kendricks, struck by the dra- 
matic character of the conjecture. He imagined a 
fiction dealing with the situation as something al- 
ready accomplished. 

“Why don’t some fellow do the Battle of Dorking 
act with that thing?” said Fulkerson. “It would 
be a card.” 

“Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,” 
said Kendricks. 

Fulkerson laughed. ‘Telepathy—clear case of 
mind-transferrence. Better see March, here, about 
it. J’d like to have it in Hwvery Other Week. It 
would make talk.” 

“Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as 
well as talking,” said the Colonel. 

“Well, sir,” said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tight- 
ly together that his imperial stuck straight outward, 
“if I had my way, there wouldn’t be any Brother- 
hood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor 
union in the whole country.” 

“What!” shouted Lindau. ‘ You would sobbress 
the unionss of the voarkingmen ?” 

“Yes, I would.” 

‘“‘And what would you do with the unionss of the 
gabidalists—the drosts, and gompines, and boolss? 
Would you dake the right from one and gife it to 
the odder ?” 

“Yes, sir, I would,” said Dryfoos, with a wicked 
look at him. 

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some 
furious protest, but March put his hand on his 
shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to him to 
say in German, “ But it is infamous—infamous ! 
What kind of man is this? Who is he? He has 
the heart of a tyrant.” 

Colonel Woodburn cut in. ‘‘ You couldn’t do 
that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your system. And if you 
attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that 
kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner 
than you expected. Your commercialized society 
has built its house on the sands. It will have to 
go. But I should be sorry if it went before its 
time.” 

“You are righdt, sir,” said Lindau. “It would 
be a bity. I hobe it will last till it feelss its rot- 
tenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its hour gomes, 
when it trops to bieces with the veight of its own 
gorrubtion—what then ?” 

“It’s not to be supposed that a system of things 
like this can drop to pieces of its own accord, like 
the old Republic of Venice,” said the Colonel. 
“But when the last vestige of commercial society 
is gone, then we can begin to build anew; and we 
shall build upon the central idea, not of the false 


liberty you now worship, but: of responsibility—re- 
sponsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the 
cultivated class shall be responsible to the central 


_ authority—emperor, duke, president ; the name does 


not matter—for the national expense and the na- 
tional defence, and it shall be responsible to the 
working classes of all kinds for homes and lands 
and implements, and the opportunity to labor at all 
times. The working classes shall be responsible 
to the leisure class for the support of its dignity in 
peace, and shall be subject to its command in war. 
The rich shall warrant the poor against planless 
production and the ruin that now follows, against 
danger from without and famine from within, and 
the poor—” 

“No, no, no!” shouted Lindau. ‘‘ The State shall 
do that—the whole beople. The men who voark 
shall have and shall eat; and the men that will not 
voark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe. 
He will go to the State, and the State will see that 
he haf voark, and that he haf foodt. All the roadts 
and mills and mines and landts shall be the beople’s 
and be ron by the beople for the beople. There 
shall be no rich and no boor; and there shall not be 
war any more, for what bower wouldt dare’ to ad- 
dack a beople bound togeder in a broderhood like 
that ?” 

“Lion and lamb act,” said Fulkerson, not well 
knowing, after so much champagne, what words he 
was using. 

No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said 
coldly to Lindau, “You are talking paternalism, 
gir,” 

“And you are dalking feudalism!” retorted the 
old man. 

The Colonel did not reply. <A silence ensued, 
which no one broke till Fulkerson said: ‘ Well, 
now, look here. If either one of these millenniums 
was brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise, 
what would become of Avery Other Week? . Who 
would want March for an editor? How would 
Beaton sell his pictures? Who would print Mr. 
Kendricks’s little society verses and short stories ? 
What would become of Conrad and his good 
works?” Those named grinned in support of Ful- 
kerson’s diversion, but Lindau and the Colonel did 
not speak; Dryfoos looked down at his plate, 
frowning. A waiter came round with cigars, and 
Fulkerson took one. ‘Ah,’ he said, as he bit off 
the end, and leaned over to the emblematic master- 
piece, where the brandy was still feebly flickering, 
“JT wonder if there’s enough natural gas left to light 
my cigar.” His effort put the flame out and 
knocked the derrick over; it broke in fragments 
on the table. Fulkerson cackled over the ruin: 
“T wonder if all Moffitt will look that way after 
labor and capital have fought it out together. I 
hope this ain’t ominous of anything personal, Dry- 
foos ?” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“ll take the risk of it,’ said the old man, 
harshly, 

He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to 
Frescobaldi’s man, ‘“ You can bring us the coffee in 
the library.” 

The talk did not recover itself there. Lindau 


119 


would not sit down; he refused coffee, and dis- 
missed himself with a haughty bow to the com- 
pany; Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately 
all round, when he had smoked his cigar; the others 


' followed him. It seemed to March that his own 


good-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold. 


Wil? 


Marcu met Fulkerson on the steps of the office 
next morning, where he arrived rather later than his 
wont. Fulkerson did not show any of the signs of 
suffering from the last night’s pleasure which paint- 
ed themselves in March’s face. He flirted his ‘hand 
gayly in the air, and said, ‘“‘ How’s your poor head ?” 
and broke into a knowing laugh. ‘ You don’t seem 
to have got up with the lark this morning. The 
old gentleman is in there with Conrad, as bright as 
a biscuit; he’s beat you down. Well, we did have 
a good time, didn’t we? And old Lindau and the 
Colonel, didn’t they have a good time? I don’t sup- 
pose they ever had a chance before to give their 
theories quite so much air. Oh my, how they did 
ride over us! I’m just going down to see Beaton 
about the cover of the Christmas number. I think 
we ought to try it in three or four colors, if we are 
going to observe the day at all.” He was off be- 
fore March could pull himself together to ask what 
Dryfoos wanted at the office at that hour of the 
morning; he always came in the afternoon, on his 
‘way uptown. 

The fact of his presence renewed the sinister mis- 
givings with which March had parted from him the 
night before, but Fulkerson’s cheerfulness seemed 
to gainsay them; afterward March did not know 
whether to attribute this mood to the slipperiness 
that he was aware of at times in Fulkerson, or to a 
¢ynical amusement he might have felt at leaving 
him alone to the old man, who mounted to his room 
shortly after March had reached it. 

A sort of dumb anger showed itself in his face; 
his jaw was set so firmly that he did not seem able 
at once to open it. He asked, without the cere- 
monies of greeting, ‘What does that one-armed 
Dutchman do on this book ?” 

‘What does he do?” March echoed, as people are 
‘apt to do with a question that is mandatory and 
offensive. 

“Yes, sir, what does he do? 
it ?” 

“T suppose you mean Lindau,” said March. He 
saw no reason for refusing to answer Dryfoos’s 
demand, and he decided to ignore its terms. “No, 
he doesn’t write for it in the usual way. He trans- 
lates for it; he examines the foreign magazines, 
and draws my attention to anything he thinks of 
interest. But I told you about this before—” : 


Does he write for 


“1 know what you told me, well enough. And I 
know what he is. He is a red-mouthed labor-agita- 
tor. He’s one of those foreigners that come here 
from places where they’ve never had a decent meal’s 
victuals in their lives, and as soon as they get their 
stomachs full they begin to make trouble between 
our people and their hands. There’s where the 
strikes come from, and the unions, and the secret 
societies. They come here and break our Sabbath, 
and teach their atheism. They ought to be hung! 
Let ’em go back if they don’t like it over here. 
They want to ruin the country.” 

March could not help smiling a little at the words, 
which came fast enough now in the hoarse staccato 
of Dryfoos’s passion. “I don’t know whom you 
mean by they, generally speaking; but I had the im- 
pression that poor old Lindau had once done his 
best to save the country. I don’t always like his 
way of talking, but I know that he is one of the 
truest and kindest souls in the world; and he is no 
more an atheist than I am. He is my friend, and 
I can’t allow him to be misunderstood.” 

“T don’t care what he is,” Dryfoos broke out, “I 
won’t have him round. He can’t have any more 
work from this office. I want you to stop it. I 
want you to turn him off.” 

March was standing at his desk, as he had risen 
to receive Dryfoos when he entered. He now sat 
down, and began to open his letters. 

“Do you hear ?” the old man roared at him. 
want you to turn him off.” 

‘Excuse me, Mr. Dryfoos,” said March, succeed- 
ing in an effort to speak calmly, “I don’t know 
you, in such a matter as this. My arrangements as 
editor of Hvery Other Week were made with Mr. Ful- 
kerson. I have always listened to any suggestion 
he has had to make.” 

“J don’t care for Mr. Fulkerson! He has no- 
thing to do with it,” retorted Dryfoos; but he seem- 
ed a little daunted by March’s position. 

“He has everything to do with it, as far as I am 
concerned,” March answered, with a steadiness that 
he did not feel. ‘‘I know that you are the owner 
of the periodical, but I can’t receive any suggestion 
from you, for the reason that I have given. No- 
body but Mr. Fulkerson has any right to talk with 
me about its management.” 

Dryfoos glared at him for a moment, and de- 


cy 


120 


manded, threateningly: ‘“‘Then you say you won’t 
turn that old loafer off? You say that I have got 
to keep on paying my money out to buy beer for 
a man that would cut my throat if he got the 
chance ?” 

“T say nothing at all, Mr. Dryfoos,” March an- 
swered. The blood came into his face, and he add- 
ed: “But I wall say that if you speak again of Mr. 
Lindau in those terms, one of us must leave this 
room. I will not hear you.” 

Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment; then 
he struck his hat down on his head, and stamped 
out of the room and down the stairs; and a vague 
pity came into March’s heart that was not altogeth- 
er for himself. He might be the greater sufferer 
in the end, but he was sorry to have got the bet- 
ter of that old man for the moment; and he felt 
ashamed of the anger into which Dryfoos’s anger 
had surprised him. He knew he could not say too 
much in defence of Lindau’s generosity and unsel- 
fishness, and he had not attempted to defend him 
as a political economist. He could not have taken 
any ground in relation to Dryfoos but that which 
he held, and he felt satisfied that he was right in 
refusing to receive instructions or commands from 
him. Yet somehow he was not satisfied with the 
whole affair, and not merely because his present 
triumph threatened his final advantage, but because 
he felt that in his heat he had hardly done justice 
to Dryfoos’s rights in the matter; it did not quite 
console him to reflect that Dryfoos had himself 
made it impossible. He was tempted to go home 
and tell his wife what had happened, and begin his 
preparations for the future at once. But he resist- 
ed this weakness and kept mechanically about his 
work, opening the letters and the manuscripts be- 
fore him with that curious double action of the 
mind common in men of vivid imaginations. It 
was a relief when Conrad Dryfoos, having appar- 
ently waited to make sure that his father would 
not return, came up from the counting-room and 
looked in on March with a troubled face. 

“Mr. March,” he began, “I hope father hasn’t 
been saying anything to you that you can’t over- 
look. I know he was very much excited, and when 
he is excited he is apt to say things that he is sorry 
for.”’ ) 

The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so dif- 
ferent from any attitude the peremptory old man 
would have conceivably taken for himself, made 
March smile. “Ohno. I fancy the boot is on the 
other leg. I suspect I’ve said some things your fa- 
ther can’t overlook, Conrad.” He called the young 
man by his Christian name partly to distinguish 
him from his father, partly from the infection of 
Fulkerson’s habit, and partly from a kindness for 
him that seemed naturally to express itself in that 
way. 

“T know he didn’t sleep last night, after you all 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


went away,” Conrad pursued, ‘‘and of course that. 


made him more irritable; and he was tried a good 
deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said.” 
“JT was tried a good deal myself,” said March. 
‘Lindau ought never to have been there.” 
“No.” Conrad seemed only partially to assent. 
““T told Mr. Fulkerson so. I warned him that 
Lindau would be apt to break out in some way. 


It wasn’t just to him, and it wasn’t just to your 


father, to ask him.” 

‘Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive,” Conrad gently 
urged. “He did it because he hurt his feelings that 
day about the pension.” 

“Yes; but it was a mistake. He knew that 
Lindau was inflexible about his principles, as he 
calls them, and that one of his first principles is to 
denounce the rich, in season and out of season. I 
don’t remember just what he said, last night; and 
I really thought I’'d kept him from breaking out 
in the most offensive way. But your father seems. 
very much incensed.” 

“Yes, I know,” said Conrad. 

“Of course I don’t agree with Lindau. I think 
there are as many good, kind, just people among 
the rich as there are among the poor, and that they 
are as generous and helpful. But Lindau has got 
hold of one of those partial truths that hurt worse- 
than the whole truth, and—” 

“Partial truth! the young man interrupted. 
“Didn’t the Saviour himself say, ‘ How hardly shall 
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
God’ ?” 

“Why, bless my soul!” cried March. 
agree with Lindau ?” 

“T agree with the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the 
young man, solemnly, and a strange light, of exalta- 
tion, of fanaticism, came into his wide blue eyes. 
‘“‘And I believe he meant the kingdom of heaven 
upon this earth, as well as in the skies.” 

March threw himself back in his chair and looked 
at him with a kind of stupefaction, in which his eye 
wandered to the doorway, where he saw Fulkerson 
standing, it seemed to him a long time, before he 
heard him saying, ‘“‘ Hello, hello! What’s the row ? 
Conrad pitching into you on old Lindau’s account,. 
too ?” 

The young man turned, and after a glance at 
Fulkerson’s light, smiling face, went out, as if in 
his present mood he could not bear the contact of 
that persiflant spirit. 

March felt himself getting provisionally very angry 
again. ‘Excuse me, Fulkerson, but did you know 
when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted to see 
me for?” 

“Well, no, I didn’t, exactly,” said Fulkerson, tak- 
ing his usual seat on a chair, and looking over the 
back of it at March. “I saw he was on his ear 
about something, and I thought I’d better not monk- 
ey with him much. I supposed he was going to 


“Do you 


\_ae . 
Pe ea % " ee ia acs 2 sind 4 
OO ee se ee a ee SS eS eee ee Se 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow.” 
Fulkerson broke into a laugh. : 

March remained serious. ‘‘ Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, 
willing to let the simple statement have its own 
weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, ‘came 
in here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from 
his employment on the magazine—to turn him off, 
as he put it.” 

“ Did he?” asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheer- 
fulness. ‘‘The old man is business, every time. 
Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody else 
to do Lindau’s work for you. This town is just 
running over with half-starved linguists. What did 
you say ?” 

“ What did I say?’ March echoed. ‘“ Look here, 
Fulkerson; you may regard this as a joke, but J 
don’t. I’m not used to being spoken to as if I 
were the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge 
a sensitive and cultivated man like Lindau, as if he 
were a drunken mechanic; and if that’s your idea 
of me—” 

“Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn’t mind the 
old man’s way. He don’t mean anything by it—he 
don’t know any better, if you come to that.” 

“Then, J know better,” said March. “I refused 
to receive any instructions from Mr. Dryfoos, whom 
I don’t know in my relations with Avery Other Week, 
and I referred him to you.” 

» “Youdid?” Fulkerson whistled. 
thing!” 

“T don’t care who owns the thing,” said March. 
“My negotiations were with you alone from the be- 
ginning, and I leave this matter with you. What 
do you wish done about Lindau ?” 

“Oh, better let the old fool drop,” said Fulker- 
son. “ He'll light on his feet somehow, and it will 
save a lot of rumpus.” 

* And if I decline to let him drop ?” 

“Oh, come, now, March; don’t do that,” Fulker- 
son began. 

“Tf I decline to let him drop,” March repeated, 
“what will you do?” 

“Tl be dogged if I know what I’ll do,” said Ful- 
kerson. “I hope you won’t take that stand. If 
the old man went so far as to speak to you about 
it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock 
under first as last.” 

“And do you mean to say that you would not 
stand by me in what I considered my duty—in a 
matter of principle ?”” 

“Why, of course, March,” said Fulkerson, coax- 
ingly, “I mean to do the right thing. But Dryfoos 
owns the magazine—” 


“He owns the 


121 


“He doesn’t own me,” said March, rising. ‘He 
has made the little mistake of speaking to me as if 
he did; and when”—March put on his hat and took 
his overcoat down from its nail—‘‘ when you bring 
me his apologies, or come to say that, having failed 
to make him understand they were necessary, you 
are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to 
this desk. Otherwise my resignation is at your ser- 
vice.” 

He started toward the door, and Fulkerson inter- 
cepted him. ‘ Ah, now, look here, March. Don’t do 
that! Hang it all, don’t you see where it leaves me? 
Now, you just sit down a minute, and talk it over. 
I can make you see—I can show you— Why, con- 
found the old Dutch beer-buzzer! Twenty of him 
wouldn’t be worth the trouble he’s makin’. Let 
him go, and the old man 711 come round in 
time.” 

“YT don’t think we’ve understood each other ex- 
actly, Mr. Fulkerson,” said March, very haughtily. 
‘“‘Perhaps we never can; but Pll leave you to think 
it out.” 

He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let 
him pass, with a dazed look and a mechanical move- 
ment. There was something comic in his rueful 
bewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile, 
but he said to himself that he had as much reason 
to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did not smile. 
His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to suf- 
fer any consequence rather than submit to the dic- 
tation of a man like Dryfoos; he felt keenly the 
degradation of his connection with him, and all his 
resentment of Fulkerson’s original uncandor return- 
ed; at the same time his heart ached with forebod- 
ing. It was not merely the work in which he had 
constantly grown happier that he saw taken from 
him; but he felt the misery of the man. who stakes. 
the security and plenty and peace of home upon 
some cast, and knows that losing will sweep from 
him most that most men find sweet and pleasant in 
life. He faced the fact, which no good man can . 
front without terror, that he was risking the sup- 
port of his family, and for a point of pride, of hon- 
or, which perhaps he had no right to consider in 
view of the possible adversity. He realized, as ev- 
ery hireling must, no matter how skilfully or grace- 
fully the tie is contrived for his wearing, that he 
belongs to another, whose will is his law. His in- 
dignation was shot with abject impulses to go back 
and tell Fulkerson that it was all right, and that he 
gave up. To end the anguish of his struggle he 
quickened his steps, so that he found he was reach. 
ing home almost at a run, 


122 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


MU: 


HE must have made more clatter than he sup- 
posed with his key at the apartment door, for his 
wife had come to let him in when he flung it open. 
“Why, Basil,” she said, “‘ what’s brought you back ? 
Are you sick? You’re all pale. Well, no wonder! 
This is the last of Mr. Fulkerson’s dinners you shall 
go to. You’re not strong enough for it, and your 
stomach will be all out of order for a week. How 
hot you are! and in a drip of perspiration! Now 
you'll be sick.” She took his hat away, which hung 
dangling in his hand, and pushed him into a chair 
with tender impatience. ‘‘ What zs the matter ? 
Has anything happened ?” 

“Everything has happened,” he said, getting his 
voice after one or two husky endeavors for it; and 
then he poured out a confused and huddled state- 
ment of the case, from which she only got at the 
situation by prolonged cross-questioning. 

At the end she said, “I knew Lindau would get 
you into trouble.” 

This cut March to the heart. ‘Isabel!’ he cried, 
reproachfully. 

“Oh, I know,” she retorted, and the tears began 
to come. “I don’t wonder you didn’t want to say 
much to me about that dinner at breakfast. I no- 
ticed it; but I thought you were just dull, and so I 
didn’t insist. I wish I had, now. If you had told 
me what Lindau had said, I should have known 
what would have come of it, and I could have ad- 
vised you—”’ 

“ Would you have advised me,” March demanded, 
“to submit to bullying like that, and meekly con- 
sent to commit an act of cruelty against a man who 
had once been so much my friend as Lindau?” 

“Tt was an unlucky day when you met him. I 
suppose we shall have to. go. And just when we 
had got used to New York, and begun to like it. 
I don’t know where we shall go now; Boston isn’t 
iike home any more; and we couldn’t live on two 
thousand there; I should be ashamed to try. I’m 
sure I don’t know where we can live on it. I sup- 
pose in some country village, where there are no 
schools, or anything, for the children. I don’t know 
what they'll say when we tell them, poor things.” 

Every word was a stab in March’s heart, so weakly 
tender to his own; his wife’s tears, after so much 
experience of the comparative lightness of the griefs 
that weep themselves out in women, always seemed 
wrung from his own soul; if his children suffered 
in the least through him, he felt like a murderer. 
It was far worse than he could have imagined, the 
way his wife took the affair, though he had imagined 
certain words, or perhaps only looks, from her that 
were bad enough. He had allowed for trouble, but 
trouble on Ais account: a sympathy that might bur- 


den and embarrass him; but he had not dreamt of 
this merely domestic, this petty, this sordid view of 
their potential calamity, which left him wholly out 
of the question, and embraced only what was most 
crushing and desolating in the prospect. He could 
not bear it. He caught up his hat again, and with 
some hope that his wife would try to keep him, 
rushed out of the house. He wandered aimlessly 
about, thinking the same exhausting thoughts over 
and over, till he found himself horribly hungry; 
then he went into a restaurant for his lunch, and 
when he paid, he tried to imagine how he should 
feel if that were really his last dollar. 

He went home toward the middle of the after- 
noon, basely hoping that Fulkerson had sent him 
some conciliatory message, or perhaps was waiting 
there for him to talk it over; March was quite will- 
ing to talk it over now. But it was his wife who 
again met him at the door, though it seemed an- 
other woman than the one he had left weeping in 
the morning. 

“T told the children,” she said, in smiling ex- 
planation of his absence from lunch, “that perhaps 
you were detained by business. I didn’t know but 
you had gone back to the office.” 

“Did you think I would go back there, Isabel ?” 
asked March, with a haggard look. ‘ Well, if you 
say so, I will go back, and do what Dryfoos ordered 
metodo. Im sufficiently cowed between him and 
you, I can assure you.” 

“Nonsense,” she said. “I approve of everything 
you did. But sit down, now, and don’t keep walk- 
ing that way, and let me see if I understand it per- 
fectly. Of course I had to have my say out.” 

She made him go all over his talk with Dryfoos 
again, and report his own language precisely. From 
time to time, as she got his points, she said, ‘ That 
was splendid,” “Good enough for him!” and, “‘ Oh, 
I’m so glad you said that to him!’ At the end she 
said, “‘ Well, now, let’s look at it from his point of 
view. lLet’s be perfectly just to him before we take 
another step forward.” 

“‘Or backward,” March suggested, ruefully. “The 
case is simply this: he owns the magazine.” 

“Of course.” 

“And he has a right to expect that I will con- 
sider his pecuniary interests—” 

“Oh, those detestable pecuniary interests! Don’t 
you wish there wasn’t any money in the world ?” 

“Yes; or else that there was a great deal more 
of it.—And I was perfectly willing to do that. I 
have always kept that in mind as one of my duties 
to him, ever since I understood what his relation to 
the magazine was.”’ 

“Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of 


a a oe Tee 


: 
| 


A Hazard of 


justice. You’ve done it a great deal more than I 
could, Basil. And it was just the same way with 
those horrible insurance people.” 

“T know,” March went on, trying to be proof 
against her flatteries, or at least to look as if he 
did not deserve praise—‘‘I know that what Lindau 
said was offensive to him, and I can understand how 
he felt that he had a right to punish it. All I say 
is that he had no right to punish it through me.” 

“Yes ?” said Mrs. March, askingly. 

“Tf it had been a question of making Avery Other 
Week the vehicle of Lindau’s peculiar opinions— 
though they’re not so very peculiar; he might have 
got the most of them out of Ruskin—I shouldn’t 
have had any ground to stand on, or at least then 
- Tshould have had to ask myself whether his opin- 
ions would be injurious to the magazine or not.” 

“TI don’t see,’ Mrs. March interpolated, “how 
they could hurt it much worse than Colonel Wood- 
burn’s article crying up slavery.” 

“Well,” said March, impartially, “we could print 
a dozen articles praising the slavery it’s impossible 
to have back, and it wouldn’t hurt us. But if we 
printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau 
 laims still exists, some people would call us bad 
names, and the counting-room would begin to feel 
it. But that isn’t the point. Lindau’s connection 
with Hvery Other Week is almost purely mechanical; 
he’s merely a translator of such stories and sketches 
as he first submits to me, and it isn’t at all a ques- 
tion of his opinions hurting us, but of my becoming 
an agent to punish him for his opinions. That is 
what I wouldn’t do; that’s what I never will do.” 

“Tf you did,” said his wife, “I should perfectly 
despise you. I didn’t understand how it was before. 
I thought you were just holding out against Dryfoos 
because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and 
because you wouldn’t recognize his authority. But 
now I’m with you, Basil, every time, as that horrid 
little Fulkerson says. But who would have ever 
supposed he would be so base as to side against 
you ?” 

“T don’t know,” said March, thoughtfully, “that 
we had a right to expect anything else. Fulker- 
son’s standards are low; they’re merely business 
standards ; and the good that’s in him is incidental, 
and something quite apart from his morals and 
methods. He’s naturally a generous and right- 
minded creature, but life has taught him to truckle 
and trick, like the rest of us.” 

“Tt hasn’t taught you that, Basil.” 

“Don’t be so sure. Perhaps it’s only that I’m a 
poor scholar. But I don’t know, really, that I de- 
Spise Fulkerson so much for his eourse this morn- 
ing as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dry- 
foos last night. I could hardly stomach it.” 

His wife made him tell her what they were, and 
then she said, “ Yes, that was loathsome ; I couldn’t 
have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson.” 


New Fortunes. 123 

‘‘Perhaps he only did it to keep the talk going, 
and to give the old man a chance to say some- 
thing,” March leniently suggested. ‘It was a worse 
effect because he didn’t or couldn’t follow up Ful- 
kerson’s lead.” 

‘Tt was loathsome, all the same,” his wife insist- 
ed. “It’s the end of Mr. Fulkerson, as far as I’m 
concerned.” 

‘‘T didn’t tell you before,” March resumed, after 
a@ moment, “ of my little interview with Conrad Dry- 
foos after his father left,” and now he went on to 
repeat what had passed between him and the young 
man. 

“T suspect that he and his father had been hav- 
ing some words before the old man came up to talk 
with me, and that it was that made him so furious.” 

“Yes, but what a strange position for the son of 
such a man to take! Do you suppose he says such 
things to his father ?” 

‘“‘Tdon’t know; but I suspect that in his meek way 
Conrad would say what he believed to anybody. I 
Suppose we must regard him as a kind of crank.” 

‘“‘Poor young fellow! He always makes me feel 
sad somehow. He has such a pathetic face. I 
don’t believe I ever saw him look quite happy, ex- 
cept that night at Mrs. Horn’s, when he was talking 
with Miss Vance; and then he made me feel sadder 
than ever.” 

“T don’t envy him the life he leads at home, with 
those convictions of his. I don’t see why it wouldn’t 
be as tolerable there for old Lindau himself.” 

“Well, now,” said Mrs, March, “let us put them 
all out of our minds and see what we are going to 
do ourselves.” 

They began to consider their ways, and means, 
and how and where they should live, in view of 
March’s severance of his relations with Hvery Other 
Week. They had not saved anything from the first 
year’s salary ; they had only prepared to save; and. 
they had nothing solid but their two thousand to 
count upon. But they built a future in which they 
easily lived on that and on what March earned 
with his pen. He became a free lance, and fought 
in whatever cause he thought just; he had no ties, 
no chains, They went back to Boston with the 
heroic will to do what was most distasteful; they 
would have returned to their own house if they 
had not rented it again; but at any rate Mrs. March 
helped out by taking boarders, or perhaps only let- 
ting rooms to lodgers. They had some hard 
struggles, but they succeeded. 

“The great thing,” she said, “is to be right. I’m 
ten times as happy as if you had come home and 
told me that you had consented to do what Dryfoos 
asked, and he had doubled your salary.” 

“T don’t think that would have happened in any 
event,” said March, dryly. 

“Well, no matter. I just used it for an ex- 
ample.” 


124 


They both experienced a buoyant relief, such as 
seems to come to people who begin life anew on 
whatever terms. ‘I hope we are young enough yet, 
Basil,” she said, and she would not have it when 
he said they had once been younger. 

They heard the children’s knock on the door: 
they knocked when they came home from school so 
that their mother might let them in. “Shall we 
tell them at once?” she asked, and ran to open 
for them before March could answer. 

They were not alone. Fulkerson, smiling from 
ear to ear, was with them. “Is March in?” he 
asked. 

“Mr. March is at home, yes,” she said, very 
haughtily. ‘‘He’s in his study,’ and she led the 
way there, while the children went to their rooms. 

“Well, March,” Fulkerson called out at sight of 
him, “it’s all right! The old man has come down.” 

“T suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk 
business—”’ Mrs. March began. 

“Oh, we don’t want you to go away,” said Ful- 
kerson. “I reckon March has told you, anyway.” 

“Yes, P’ve told her,” said March. ‘ Don’t go, 
Isabel. What do you mean, Fulkerson ?” 

“ He’s just gone on up home, and he sent me 
round with his apologies. He sees now that he 
had no business to speak to you as he did, and he 
withdraws everything. He’d ’a’ come round him- 
self if I'd said so, but I told him I could make 
it all right.” 

Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole 
affair put right, and the Marches knew him to be so 
kindly affected toward them, that they could not 
refuse for the moment to share his mood. They 
felt themselves slipping down from the moral height 
which they had gained, and March made a clutch to 
stay himself with the question, “‘ And Lindau ?” 

“Well,” said Fulkerson, “‘ he’s going to leave Lin- 
dau to me. You won’t have anything to do with 
it. Tl let the old fellow down easy.” 

“Do you mean,” asked March, “that Mr. Dryfoos 
insists on his being dismissed ?” . 

“Why, there isn’t any dismissing about it,” Ful- 
kerson argued. “If you don’t send him any more 
work, he won’t do any more, that’s all. Or if he 
comes round, you can— He’s to be referred to 
me,” 

March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh, 
felt herself plucked up from the soft circumstance 
of their lives, which she had sunk back into so 
quickly, and set beside him on that cold peak of 
principle again. “It won’t do, Fulkerson. It’s very 
good of you, and all that; but it comes to the same 
thing in the end. I could have gone on without 
any apology from Mr. Dryfoos; he transcended his 
authority; but that’s a minor matter. -I could have 
excused it to his ignorance of life among gentle- 
men; but I can’t consent to Lindau’s dismissal—it 
comes to that, whether you do it or I do it, and 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


whether it’s a positive or a negative thing—because 
he holds this opinion or that.” 

“But don’t you see,” said Fulkerson, “that it’s 
Just Lindau’s opinions the old man can’t stand ? 
He hasn’t got anything against him personally. I 
don’t suppose there’s anybody that appreciates Lin- 
dau in some ways more than the old man does.” 

“T understand. He wants to punish him for his 
opinions. Well, I can’t consent to that, directly or 
indirectly. We don’t print his opinions, and he has 
a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos 
agrees with them or not.” 

Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say 
nothing, but she now went and sat down in the chair 
next her husband. 

“Ah, dog on it!” cried Fulkerson, rumpling his 
hair with both hands. “What am I to do? The 
old man says he’s got to go.” 

‘And I don’t consent to his going,” said March. 

‘And you won’t stay if he goes ?” 

“‘T won’t stay if he goes.” 

Fulkerson rose. ‘Well, well! Ive got to see 
about it. I’m afraid the old man won’t stand it, 
March; I am, indeed. I wish you’d reconsider. I 
—I’d take it as a personal favor if you would. It 
leaves me in a fix. You see I’ve got to side with 
one or the other.” 

March made no reply to this, except to say, ‘‘ Yes, 
you must stand by him, or you must stand by me.” 

“Well, well! Hold on awhile! I'll see you in 
the morning. Don’t take any steps—” 

“Oh, there are no steps to take,” said March, 
with a melancholy smile. ‘The steps are stopped; 
that’s all.” He sank back into his chair when Ful- 
kerson was gone, and drew a long breath. “This 
is pretty rough. I thought we had got through it.” 

‘““No,” said his wife. “It seems as if I had to 
make the fight all over again.” 

“Well, it’s a good thing it’s a holy war.” 

“T can’t bear the suspense. Why didn’t you tell 
him outright you wouldn’t go back on any terms ?” 

“T might as well, and got the glory. He’ll never 
move Dryfoos. I suppose we both would like to go 
back, if we could.” 

“Oh, I suppose so.” 

They could not regain their lost exaltation, their 
lost dignity. At dinner Mrs. March asked the chil- 
dren how they would like to go back to Boston to 
live ?” 

“Why, we’re not going, are we?” asked Tom, 
without enthusiasm. 

‘“‘T was just wondering how you felt about it, 
now,” she said, with an underlook at her husband. 

“Well, if we go back,” said Bella, “I want to 
live on the Back Bay. It’s awfully Micky at the 
South End.” 

“T suppose I should go to Harvard,” said Tom, 
“and Pd room out at Cambridge. It would be 
easier to get at you on the Back Bay.” 


‘dSOU NOSUANTOY,, 


‘IT LNOAV AIS OL LOO TAT | THM ‘TIEM, 


Ll GNVIS LNOM NYW G10 AHL d1Vaay WI 


SV TD EG DIU LF Had) MHP my 


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SF IEYNIOMDC Pip LSD S 


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«¢ CHOUVIN 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and 
in view of these grand expectations of his children, 
March resolved to go as far as he could in meeting 
Dryfoos’s wishes. He proposed the theatre as a 
distraction from the anxieties that he knew were 
pressing equally on his wife. “We might go to 
the Old Homestead,” he suggested, with a sad irony, 
which only his wife felt. 

“Oh yes, let’s!” cried Bella. 

While they were getting ready, some one rang, 
and Bella went to the door, and then came to tell 
her father that it was Mr. Lindau. “He says he 
wants to see you just a moment. MHe’s in the par- 
lor, and he won’t sit down, or anything.” 

“What can he want?” groaned Mrs. March, from 
their common dismay. if 

March apprehended a storm in the old man’s 
face. But he only stood in the middle of the room, 
looking very sad and grave. ‘You are coing oudt,” 
he said. “I won’t geep you long. I haf gome to 
pring pack dose macassines, and dis mawney. I 
can’t do any more voark for you; and I can’t geep 
the mawney you haf baid me a’ready. It is not 
hawnest mawney—that has been oarned py voark ; 
it is mawney that hass been mate by sbeculation, 
and the obbression off lapor, and the necessity of 
the boor, by a man—Here it is, efery tollar, efery 
gent. Dake it; I feel as if dere vas ploodt on it.” 

“Why, Lindau,” began March, but the old man 
interrupted him. 

“Ton’t dalk to me, Passil! I could not haf be- 
lievedt it of you. When you know how I feel 
about dose tings, why tidn’t you dell me whose 
mawney you bay oudt to me? Ach,I ton’t plame 
you—lI ton’t rebroach you. You haf nefer thought 


125 


off it; boat I—JZ have thought, and I should be 
cuilty, I must share that man’s cuilt, if I gept his 
mawney. If you hat toldt me at the beginning—if 
you hadt peen frank with me—; boat it iss all 
righdt; you can go on; you ton’t see these things 
as I see them; and you haf cot a family, and I am 
a free man. I voark to myself, and when I don’t 
voark, I sdarfe to myself. But I geep my handts 
glean, voark or sdarfe. Gif him his mawney pack! 
I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss feel- 
ings, but I could not pear to douch him, and hiss 
mawney is like boison !” 

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him 
the folly, the injustice, the absurdity of his course ; 
it ended in their both getting angry, and in Lindau’s 
going away in a whirl of German that included Ba- 
sil in the guilt of the man whom Lindau called his 
master. 

“Well,” said Mrs. March. ‘“ He is a crank, and 
I think you’re well rid of him. Now you have no 
quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can 
keep right on.” 

“Yes,” said March. “I wish it didn’t make me 
feel so sneaking. What a long day it’s been! It 
seems like a century since I got up.” 

“Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else 
left to happen ?” 

“T hope not. Id like to go to bed.” 

“Why, aren’t you going to the theatre?” wailed 
Bella, coming in upon her father’s desperate ex- 
pression. 

“The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant af- 
ter we got home,” and March amused himself at the 
puzzled countenance of the child. “Come on! Is 
Tom ready?” 


IX. 


FuLkerson parted with the Marches in such trou- 
ble of mind that he did not feel able to meet that 
night the people whom he usually kept so gay at Mrs. 
‘Leighton’s table. He went to Maroni’s for his din- 
ner, for this reason and for others more obscure. 
He could not expect to do anything more with Dry- 
foos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that 
he had already made an extreme concession to 
March, and he believed that if he was to get any- 
thing more from him it must be after Dryfoos had 
dined. But he was not without the hope, vague and 
indefinite as it might be, that he should find Lindau 
at Maroni’s, and perhaps should get some conces- 
sion from him, some word of regret or apology 
which he could report to Dryfoos, and at least make 
the means of reopening the affair with him; per- 
haps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, 
would back down altogether, and for March’s sake 
would withdraw from all connection with Zvery 


Other Week himself, and so leave everything serene. 
Fulkerson felt capable, in his desperation, of deli- 
cately suggesting such a course to Lindau, or even 
of plainly advising it: he did not care for Lindau a 
great deal, and he did care a great deal for the 
magazine. 

But he did not find Lindau at Maroni’s; he only 
found Beaton. He sat looking at the doorway as 
Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally came 
and took a place at his table. Something in Bea- 
ton’s large-eyed solemnity of aspect invited Fulker- 
son to confidence, and he said, as he pulled his 
napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the 
scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni’s was apt to 
be), across his knees, “I was looking for you this 
morning, to talk with you about the Christmas num- 
ber, and I was a good deal worked up because I 
couldn’t find you; but I guess I might as well have 
spared myself my emotions.” 


126 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Why ?” asked Beaton, briefly. 

‘““'Well, I don’t know as there’s going to be any 
Christmas number.” 

“Why ?” Beaton asked again. 

‘““Row between the financial angel and the lit- 
erary editor about the chief translator and polyglot 
smeller.” 

“Lindau?” 

“Lindau is his name.” 

“What does the literary editor expect after Lin- 
dau’s expression of his views last night?” 

“T don’t know what he expected, but the ground 
he took with the old man was that as Lindau’s opin- 
ions didn’t characterize his work on the magazine 
he would not be made the instrument of punishing 
him for them: the old man wanted him turned off, 
as he calls it.” 

“Seems to be pretty good ground,” said Beaton, 
impartially, while he speculated, with a dull trouble at 
heart, on the effect the row would have on his own 
fortunes. His late visit home had made him feel 
that the claim of his family upon him for some 
repayment of help given could not be much longer 
delayed; with his mother sick and his father grow- 
ing old, he must begin to do something for them, 
but up to this time he had spent his salary even 
faster than he had earned it: when Fulkerson 
came in he was wondering whether he could get 
him to increase it, if he threatened to give up his 
work, and he wished that he was enough in love with 
Margaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to 
marry her, only to end in the sorrowful conviction 
that he was really in love with Alma Leighton, who 
had no money, and who had apparently no wish to 
be married for love,even. ‘And what are you go- 
ing to do about it?” he asked, listlessly. 

“Be dogged if I know what I’m going to do about 
it,” said Fulkerson. ‘“ I’ve been round all day, try- 
ing to pick up the pieces—row began right after 
breakfast this morning—and one time I thought I’d 
got the thing all put together again. I got the old 
man to say that he had spoken to March a little too 
authoritatively about Lindau; that in fact he ought 
to have communicated his wishes through me; 
and that he was willing to have me get rid of Lin- 
dau, and March needn’t have anything to do with it. 
I thought that was pretty white, but March says the 
apologies and regrets are all well enough in their 
way, but they leave the main question where they 
found it.” 

‘What is the main question ?” Beaton asked, 
pouring himself out some Chianti; as he set the 
flask down he made the reflection that if he would 
drink water instead of Chianti he could send his 
father three dollars a week, on his back debts, and 
he resolved to do it. 

“The main question, as March looks at it, is the 
question of punishing Lindau for his private opin- 
ions ; he says that if he consents to my bouncing 


the old fellow it’s the same as if he bounced - 


him.” 


“Tt might have that complexion in some lights.’” 
g p gots, 


said Beaton. He drank off his Chianti, and thought 
he would have it twice a week, or make Maroni 
keep the half-bottles over for him, and send his 


father two dollars. ‘And what are you going to 


do now?” 

‘““That’s what I don’t know,” said Fulkerson, rue- 
fully. After a moment he said, desperately, “ Bea- 
ton, you’ve got a pretty good head; why don’t you 
suggest something ?” 

“Why don’t you let March go?” Beaton sug- 
gested. 

“Ah, I couldn’t,” said Fulkerson. “I got him 
to break-up in Boston and come here; I like him; 
nobody else could get the hang of the thing like 
he has; he’s—a friend.” Fulkerson said this with 
the nearest approach he could make to seriousness, 
which was a kind of unhappiness. 

Beaton shrugged. “Oh, if you can afford to have 
ideals, I congratulate you. They’re too expensive 
for me. Then, suppose you get rid of Dryfoos?” 

Fulkerson laughed forlornly. ‘Go on, Bildad. 
Like to sprinkle a few ashes over my boils? Don’t 
mind me /”” 

They both sat silent a little while, and then Bea- 
ton said, “‘I suppose you haven’t seen Dryfoos the 
second time ?” 

“No. I came in here to gird up my loins with 
a little dinner before I tackled him. But something 
seems to be the matter with Maroni’s cook. J don’t 
want anything to eat.” 

“The cooking’s about as bad as usual,” said Bea- 
ton. After a moment, he added, ironically, for he 
found Fulkerson’s misery a kind of relief from his 
own, and was willing to protract it as long as it 
was amusing: “ Why not try an envoy extraordinary 
and minister plenipotentiary ?” 

“What do you mean ?” 

“Get that other old fool to go to Dryfoos for 
you!” 

“Which other old fool? The old fools seem to 
be as thick as flies.” 

“That Southern one.” 

“Colonel Woodburn ?” 

“Mmmmm.” 

“He did seem to rather take to the Colonel!” 
Fulkerson mused aloud. 

“Of course he did. Woodburn, with his idiotic 
talk about patriarchal slavery, is the man on horse- 
back to Dryfoos’s muddy imagination. He'd listen 
to him abjectly, and he’d do whatever Woodburn 
told him to do.” Beaton smiled cynically. 

Fulkerson got up and reached for his coat and 
hat. ‘“You’ve struck it, old man.” The waiter 
came up to help him on with his coat; Fulkerson 
slipped a dollar in his hand. ‘Never mind the 
coat; you can give the rest of my dinner to the 


“4 
i 
= 
4 
2 
q 
_ 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


poor, Paolo. Beaton,shake! You've saved my life, 
little boy, though I don’t think you meant it.” He 
took Beaton’s hand and solemnly pressed it, and then 
almost ran out of the door. 

They had just reached coffee at Mrs. Leighton’s 
when he arrived, and sat down with them, and began 
to put some of the life of his new hope into them. 
His appetite revived, and after protesting that he 
would not take anything but coffee, he went back 
and ate some of the earlier courses. But with the 
pressure of his purpose driving him forward, he 
did not conceal from Miss Woodburn, at least, that 
he was eager to get her apart from the rest for 
some reason. When he accomplished this, it seem- 
ed as if he had contrived it all himself, but perhaps 
he had not wholly contrived it. 

“Tm so glad to get a chance to speak to you 
alone,” he said at once; and while she waited for 
the next word he made a pause, and then said, des- 
perately, “I want you to help me; and if you can’t 
help me, there’s no help for me.” 

“Mah goodness,” she said, “is the case so bad as 
that? What in the woald is the trouble?” 
“Yes, it’s a bad case,” said Fulkerson. 

your father to help me.” 

“Oh, Ah thoat you said me /” 

“Yes; I want you to help me with your father. 
I suppose I ought to go to him at once, but Pm a 
little afraid of him.” 

“ And you awe not afraid of me? Ah don’t think 
that’s very flattering, Mr. Fulkerson. You ought to 
think Ah’m twahce as awful as papa.” 

“Oh,I do! You see, ’'m quite paralyzed before 
you, and so I don’t feel anything.” 

“Well, it’s a pretty lahvely kyand of paralysis. 
But—go on.” 

“T will—I will. If I can only begin.” 

“Pohaps Ah maght begin fo’ you.” 

“No, you can’t. Lord knows, Id like to let you. 
Well, it’s like this.” 

Fulkerson made a clutch at his hair, and then, 
after another hesitation, he abruptly laid the whole 
affair before her. He did not think it necessary to 
state the exact nature of the offence Lindau had 
given Dryfoos, for he doubted if she could grasp it, 
and he was profuse of his excuses for troubling her 
with the matter, and of wonder at himself for hav- 
ing done so. In the rapture of his concern at hav- 
ing perhaps made a fool of himself, he forgot why 
he had told her; but she seemed to like having been 
confided in, and she said, ‘‘ Well, Ah don’t see what 
you can do with you’ ahdeals of friendship, except 
stand bah Mr. Mawch.” 

“My ideals of friendship? What do you mean ?” 

“Oh, don’t you suppose we know? Mr. Beaton 
said you we’ a pofect Bahyard in friendship, and 
you would sacrifice anything to it.” 

“Ts that so?” said Fulkerson, thinking how eas- 
ily he could sacrifice Lindau in this case. He had 


“T want 


127 


never supposed before that he was so chivalrous 
in such matters, but he now began to see it in that 
light, and he wondered that he could ever have 
entertained for a moment the idea of throwing Mareh 
over. 

“But, Ah most say,’? Miss Woodburn went on, 
“Ah don’t envy you you’ next interview with Mr. 
Dryfoos. Ah suppose you’ll have to see him at once 
aboat it.” 

The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object 
of his confidences. ‘‘Ah, there’s where your help 
comes in. I’ve exhausted all the influence J have 
with Dryfoos—” 

‘Good gracious, you don’t expect AA could have 
any !” 

They both laughed at the comic dismay with which 
she conveyed the preposterous notion; and Fulker- 
son said, “If I judged from myself, I should expect 
you to bring him round instantly.” 

‘““Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, with 
mock-meekness. 

“Not at all. But it isn’t Dryfoos I want you to 
help me with; it’s your father. I want your father 
to interview Dryfoos for me, and I—I’m afraid to 
ask him.” 

‘Poo’ Mr. Fulkerson!” she said, and she insin- 
uated something through her burlesque compassion 
that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his heart 
that the woman never lived who was so witty, so 
wise, so beautiful, and so good. “Come raght with 
me this minute, if the cyoast’s clea’.”” She went to 
the door of the dining-room and looked in across 
its gloom to the little gallery where her father sat 
beside a lamp reading his evening paper; Mrs. Leigh- 
ton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below, 
and Alma had gone to her room. She beckoned 
Fulkerson with the hand outstretched behind her, 
and said, ‘Go and ask him,” 

‘“¢ Alone!” he palpitated. 

“Oh, what a cyowahd !” she cried, and went with 
him. ‘Ah suppose you'll want me to tell him 
aboat it.” 

“Well, I wish you’d begin, Miss Woodburn,” he 
said. ‘The fact is, you know, [ve been over it so 
rouch I’m kind of sick of the thing.” 

Miss Woodburn advanced, and put her hand on 
her father’s shoulder. ‘Look heah, papa! Mr. 
Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants 
me to do it fo’ him.” 

The Colonel looked up through his glasses with 
the sort of ferocity elderly men sometimes have to 
put on in order to keep their glasses from falling 
off. His daughter continued : 

“‘He’s got into an awful difficulty with his edito’ 
and his proprieto’, and he wants you to pacify 
them.” 

“T do not know whethah I understand the case 
exactly,” said the Colonel, “but Mr. Fulkerson may 
command me to the extent of my ability.” 


128 


“You don’t understand it aftah what Ah’ve said ?” 
cried the girl. ‘Then Ah don’t see but what you'll 
have to explain it you’self, Mr. Fulkerson.” 

“Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous 
about it, Colonel,” said Fulkerson, glad of the joking 
shape she had given the affair, “that I can only 
throw in a little side light here and there.” 

The Colonel listened, as Fulkerson went on, with 
a grave, diplomatic satisfaction. He felt gratified, 
honored, even, he said, by Mr. Fulkerson’s appeal 
to him; and probably it gave him something of the 
high joy that an affair of honor would have brought 
him in the days when he had arranged for meetings 
between gentlemen. Next to bearing a challenge, 
this work of composing a difficulty must have been 
grateful. But he gave no outward sign of his sat- 
isfaction in making a réswmé of the case so as to 
get the points clearly in his mind. 

“T was afraid, sir,”’ he said, with the state due to 
the serious nature of the facts, “that Mr. Lindau 
had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of his ques- 
tions at the dinner table last night.” 

“ Perfect red rag to a bull,” Fulkerson put in; 
and then he wanted to withdraw his words at the 
Colonel’s look of displeasure. 

“JT have no reflections to make upon Mr. Lin- 
dau,” Colonel Woodburn continued, and Fulkerson 
felt grateful to him for going on; “I do not agree 
with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on 
sociological points; but the course of the conversa- 
tion had invited him to the expression of his con- 
victions, and’he had a right to express them, so far 
as they had no personal bearing.” 

“Of course,” said Fulkerson, while Miss Wood- 
burn perched on the arm of her father’s chair. 

“At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr. Dry- 
foos felt a personal censure in Mr. Lindau’s ques- 
tions concerning his suppression of the strike among 
his workmen, he had a right to resent it.” 

“Exactly,” Fulkerson assented. 

“But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high- 
spirited gentleman like Mr. March—I confess that 
my feelings are with him very warmly in the matter 
—could not submit to dictation of the nature you 
describe.” 

“Yes, I see,” said Fulkerson; and with that 
strange duplex action of the human mind, he wish- 
ed that it was Ais hair, and not her father’s, that 
Miss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner 
of her fan. 

‘Mr. Lindau,” the Colonel concluded, “ was right 
from his point of view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally 
right. The position of Mr. March is perfectly cor- 
rect—” 

His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair 
arm. “Mah goodness! If nobody’s in the wrong, 
ho’ awe you evah going to get the mattah straight ?” 

“Yes; you see,” Fulkerson added, “nobody can 
give in.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Pardon me,” said the Colonel, “the case is one 
in which all can give in.” 

“T don’t know which ’ll begin,” said Fulker- 
son. 

The Colonel rose. “Mr. Lindau must begin, sir. 
We must begin by seeing Mr. Lindau, and securing 
from him the assurance that in the expression of 
his peculiar views he had no intention of offering 
any personal offence to Mr. Dryfoos. If I have 
formed a correct estimate of Mr. Lindau, this will 
be perfectly simple.” 

Fulkerson shook his head. ‘ But it wouldn’t 
help. Dryfoos don’t care a rap whether Lindau 
meant any personal offence or not. As far as that 
is concerned, he’s got a hide like a hippopotamus. 
But what he hates is Lindau’s opinions, and what 
he says is that no man who holds such opinions 
shall have any work from him. And what March 
says is that no man shall be punished through him 
for his opinions, he don’t care what they are.’ 

The Colonel stood a moment in silence. “ And 
what do you expect me to do under the circum- 
stances ?” 

“TI came to you for advice—I thought you might 
suggest—” 

“Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos ?” 

“Well, that’s about the size of it,” Fulkerson 
admitted. ‘You see, Colonel,” he hastened on, “I 
know that you have a great deal of influence with 
him; that article of yours is about the only thing 
he’s ever read in Hvery Other Week, and he’s proud 
of your acquaintance. Well, you know,” and here 
Fulkerson brought in the figure that struck him 
so much in Beaton’s phrase, and had been on his 
tongue ever since, “you’re the man on horseback 
to him; and he’d be more apt to do what you say 
than if anybody else said it.” 

“You are very good, sir,” said the Colonel, trying 
to be proof against the flattery, “but I am afraid 
you overrate my influence.’ Fulkerson let him pon- 
der the matter silently, and his daughter governed 
her impatience by holding her fan against her lips. 
Whatever the process was in the Colonel’s mind, he 
said at last: “I see no good reason for declining to 
act for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very happy 
if I can be of service to you. But’’—he stopped 
Fulkerson from cutting in with precipitate thanks 
—“T think I have a right, sir, to ask what your 
course will be in the event of failure ?” 

“Failure?” Fulkerson repeated, in dismay. 

“Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this 
mission is one not wholly agreeable to my feel- 
ings.” 

“Oh, I understand that, Colonel, and I assure you 
that I appreciate, I—” 

““There is no use trying to blink the fact, sir, 
that there are certain aspects of Mr. Dryfoos’s 
character in which he is not a gentleman. We 
have alluded to this fact before, and I need not 


3, 2 


SS 


——SS 


Sar 


SS 


” 


‘CAND FULKERSON HELPED HIM ON WITH HIS OVERCOAT 


130 A Hazard of 


When they lifted their eyes from each other again 
it was half past ten. ‘No’ you most go,” she said. 

“ But the Colonel—our fate ?” 

“The Co’nel is often out late, and Ah’m not 
afraid of any fate, no’ that we’ve taken it into ouah 
own hands.”? She looked at him with dewy eyes of 
trust, of inspiration. 

“Oh, it’s going to come out all right,” he said. 
“Tt can’t come out wrong now, no matter what hap- 
pens. But who'd have thought it, when I came into 
this house, in such a state of sin and misery, half 
an hour ago—”’ 

“Three houahs and a half ago!” she said. ‘No’ 
you most jost go. Ah’m tahed to death. Good- 
night. You can come in the mawning to see— 
papa.” She opened the door, and pushed him out 
with enrapturing violence, and he ran laughing down 
the steps into her father’s arms. 

“Why, Colonel! I was just going up to meet 
you.” He really thought he would walk off his ex- 
ultation in that direction. 

“T am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson,” the Col- 
onel began, gravely, “that Mr. Dryfoos adheres to 
his position.” 

“Oh, all right,” said Fulkerson, with unabated joy. 
“It’s what I expected. Well, my course is clear; I 
shall stand by March, and I guess the world won’t 
come to an end if he bounces us both. But I’m 
everlastingly obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn, and 
I don’t know what to say to you. I—TI won’t detain 
you now; it’s so late. I'll see you in the morning. 
Good-ni—” 

Fulkerson did not realize that it takes two to 
part. The Colonel laid hold of his arm and turned 
away with him. “I will walk toward your place 
with you. I can understand why you should be 
anxious to know the particulars of my interview 
with Mr. Dryfoos ;” and in the statement which fol- 
lowed he did not spare him the smallest. It out- 
lasted their walk, and detained them long on the 
steps of the very Other Week building. But at the 
end, Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light 
of heart as if he had been listening to the gayest 
promises that fortune could make. 

By the time he met March at the office next 
morning, a little, but only a very little, misgiving 
saddened his golden heaven. He took March’s 
hand with high courage, and said, “ Well, the old 
man sticks to his point, March.” He added, 
with the sense of saying it before Miss Wood- 
burn, “ And J stick by you. I’ve thought it all over, 
and I’d rather be right with you than wrong with 
him.” 

‘“‘Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson,” said 
March. ‘But perhaps—perhaps we can save over 
our heroics for another occasion. Lindau seems to 
have got in with his for the present.” 

He told him of Lindau’s last visit, and they stood 
a moment looking at each other rather sneaking- 


New Fortunes. 


ly. Fulkerson was the first to recover his spirits. 
“Well,” he said, cheerily, ‘that lets us out.” 

“Does it? I’m not sure it lets me out,” said 
March; but he said this in tribute to his crippled 
self-respect rather than as a forecast of any action 
in the matter. t 

“Why, what are you going to do?” Fulkerson 
asked. ‘If Lindau won’t work for Dryfoos, you 
can’t make him,” 

March sighed. ‘What are you going to do with 
this money?” He glanced at the heap of bills he 
had flung on the table between them. __ 

Fulkerson scratched his head. ‘Ah, dogged if 
ZI know. Can’t we give it to the deserving poor,. 
somehow, if we can find ’em ?” 

“T suppose we’ve no right to use it in any way.. 
You must give it to Dryfoos.”’ 

“To the deserving rich? Well, you can always 
find them. I reckon you don’t want to appear in the- 
transaction; J don’t, either; but I guess I must.” 
Fulkerson gathered up the money and carried it to. 
Conrad. He directed him to account for it in his. 
books as conscience-money, and he enjoyed the joke 
more than Conrad seemed to do when he was told 
where it came from. 

Fulkerson was able to wear off the disagreeable: 
impression the affair left during the course of the 
forenoon, and he met Miss Woodburn with all a 
lover’s buoyancy when he went to lunch. She was 
as happy as he when he told her how fortunately 
the whole thing had ended, and he took her view 
that it was a reward of his courage in having dared. 
the worst. They both felt, as the newly plighted 
always do, that they were in the best relations with. 
the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had 
been especially looked to in the disposition of events. 
They were in a glow of rapturous content with 
themselves and radiant worship of each other; she 
was sure that he merited the bright future opening 
to them both, as much as if he owed it directly to. 
some noble action of his own; he felt that he was. 
indebted for the favor of Heaven entirely to the 
still incredible accident of her preference of him 
over other men. 

Colonel Woodburn, who was not yet in the se- 
cret of their love, perhaps failed for this reason to: 
share their satisfaction with a result so unexpect- 
edly brought about. The blessing on their hopes. 
seemed to his ignorance to involve certain sacrifices. 
of personal feeling at which he hinted in suggest- 
ing that Dryfoos should now be asked to make 
some abstract concessions and acknowledgments 3. 
his daughter hastened to deny that these were at all 
necessary; and Fulkerson eagerly explained why. 
The thing was over; what was the use of opening. 
it up again ? 

“Perhaps none,” the Colonel admitted. But he 
added, “I should like the opportunity of taking Mr. 
Lindau’s hand in the presence of Mr. Dryfoos, and. 


Fulkerson. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


assuring him that I considered him a man of prin- 


ciple and a man of honor; a gentleman, sir, whom 
I was proud and happy to have known.” 
“Well, Ah’ve no doabt,” said his daughter, de- 


% 
+ 


SUPERFICIALLY, the affairs of Every Other Week 
settled into their wonted form again, and for Ful- 
kerson they seemed thoroughly reinstated. But 
March had a feeling of impermanency from what 
had happened, mixed with a fantastic sense of 
shame toward Lindau. He did not sympathize with 
_ Lindaw’s opinions; he thought his remedy for ex. 

isting evils as wildly impracticable as Colonel Wood. 
burn’s. But while he thought this, and while he 
could justly blame Fulkerson for Lindau’s presence 
at Dryfoos’s dinner, which his zeal had brought 
about in spite of March’s protests, still he could 
not rid himself of the reproach of uncandor with 
Lindau. He ought to have told him frankly about 
the ownership of the magazine, and what manner 
of man the man was whose money he was taking. 
But he said that he never could have imagined that 
he was serious in his preposterous attitude in re- 
gard to a class of men who embody half the pros- 
perity of the country; and he had moments of re- 
volt against his own humiliation before Lindau, in 
which he found it monstrous that he should return 
Dryfoos’s money as if it had been the spoil of a 
robber. His wife agreed with him in these mo- 
ments, and said it was a great relief not to have 
that tiresome old German coming about. They had 
to account for his absence evasively to the children, 
whom they could not very well tell that their father 
was living on money that Lindau disdained to take, 
even though Lindau was wrong and their father was 
right. This heightened Mrs. March’s resentment 
toward both Lindau and Dryfoos, who between them 
had placed her husband in a false position. If any- 
thing, she resented Dryfoos’s conduct more than 
Lindau’s. He had never spoken to March about 
_ the affair since Lindau had renounced his work, or 
_ added to the apologetic messages he had sent by 
; So far as March knew, Dryfoos had 
been left to suppose that Lindau had simply stopped 
for some reason that did not personally affect him. 
- They never spoke of him, and March was too proud 
to ask either Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old 
man knew that Lindau had returned his money. 
He avoided talking to Conrad, from a feeling that 
if he did, he should involuntarily lead him on to 
speak of his differences with his father. Between 
himself and Fulkerson, even, he was uneasily aware 
of a want of their old perfect friendliness. Fulker- 
son had finally behaved with honor and courage; 
but his provisional reluctance had given March the 


131 


murely, “that you'll have the chance, some day; 
and we would all lahke to join you. But at the 
same tahme, I think Mr. Fulkerson is well oat of it 
fo’ the present.” 


a ; ’ Part Fifth. 


measure of Fulkerson’s character in one direction, 
and he could not ignore the fact that it was smaller 
than he could have wished. 

He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared 
his discomfort or not. It certainly wore away, even 
with March, as time passed, and with Fulkerson, in 
the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far 
more transient, if it existed at all. He advanced 
into the winter as radiantly as if to meet the spring, 
and he said that if there were any pleasanter month 
of the year than, November, it was December, es- 
pecially when the weather was good and wet and 
muddy most of the time, so that you had to keep 
in-doors a long while after you called anywhere. 

Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of hig 
daughter’s engagement, when she asked his consent 
to it, that such a dreamer must have in regard to 
any reality that threatens to affect the course of 
his reveries. He had not perhaps taken her mar- 
riage into account, except as a remote contingency ; 
and certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of son- 
in-law that he had imagined in dealing with that 
abstraction. But because he had nothing of the» 
sort definitely in mind, he could not oppose the se- 
lection of Fulkerson with success; he really knew 
nothing against him, and he knew many things in 
his favor; Fulkerson inspired him with the liking 
that every one felt for him in a measure; he amused 
him, he cheered him; and the Colonel had been so 
much used to leaving action of all kinds to his 
daughter that when he came to close quarters with 
the question of a son-in-law, he felt helpless to de- 
cide it, and he let her decide it, as if it were still 
to be decided when it was submitted to him. She 
was competent to treat it in all its phases: not 


merely those of personal interest, but those of duty 


to the broken Southern past, sentimentally dear to 
him, and practically absurd to her. No such South 
as he remembered had ever existed to her know. 
ledge, and no such civilization as he imagined would 
ever exist, to her belief, anywhere. She took the 
world as she found it, and made the best of it. She 
trusted in Fulkerson; she had proved his magna- 
nimity in a serious emergency; and in small things 
she was willing fearlessly to chance it with him. 
She was not a sentimentalist, and there was nothing 
fantastic in her expectations; she was a girl of good 
sense and right mind, and she liked the immediate 
practicality as well as the final honor of Fulkerson. 
She did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she 


1320 


realized him; she did him justice, and she would not 
have believed that she did him more than justice 
if she had sometimes known him to do himself less. 

Their engagement was a fact to which the Leigh- 
ton household adjusted itself almost as simply as 
the lovers themselves; Miss Woodburn told the la- 
dies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson 
,could keep from March very long. He sent word of 
it to Mrs. March by her husband; and his engage- 
ment perhaps did more than anything else to con- 
firm the confidence in him which had been shaken 
by his early behavior in the Lindau episode, and 
not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity to March. 
But now she felt that a man who wished to get 
married so obviously and entirely for love was full 
of all kinds of the best instincts, and only needed 
the guidance of a wife to become very noble. She 
interested herself intensely in balancing the respec- 
tive merits of the engaged couple, and after her 
call upon Miss Woodburn in her new character she 
prided herself upon recognizing the worth of some 
strictly Southern qualities in her, while maintaining 
the general average of New England superiority. 
She could not reconcile herself to the Virginian cus- 
tom illustrated in her having been christened with 
the surname of Madison; and she said that its pet 
form of Mad, which Fulkerson promptly invented, 
only made it more ridiculous. 

Fulkerson was slower in telling Beaton. He was 
afraid, somehow, of Beaton’s taking the matter in 
the cynical way; Miss Woodburn said she would 
break off the engagement if Beaton was left to 
guess it or find it out by accident, and then Ful- 
kerson plucked up his courage. Beaton received 
the news with gravity, and with a sort of melan- 
choly meekness that strongly moved Fulkerson’s 
sympathy, and made him wish that Beaton was en- 
gaged too. 

It made Beaton feel very old; it somehow left 
him behind and forgotten; in a manner, it made 
him feel trifled with. Something of the unfriendli- 
ness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and 
he allowed the sadness of his conviction that he 
had not the means to marry on to tinge his recog- 
nition of the fact that Alma Leighton would not 
have wanted him to marry her, if he had. He was 
now often in that martyr mood in which he wished 
to help his father; not only to deny himself Chianti, 
but to forego a fur-lined overcoat which he intend- 
ed to get for the winter. He postponed the mo- 
ment of actual sacrifice as regarded the Chianti, 
and he bought the overcoat in an anguish of self- 
reproach. He wore it the first evening after he 
got it in going to call upon the Leightons, and it 
seemed to him a piece of ghastly irony when Alma 
complimented his picturesqueness in it, and asked 
him to let her sketch him. 

‘Oh, you can sketch me,” he said, with so much 
gloom that it made her laugh. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Tf you think it’s so serious, I’d rather not.” 

“No,no! Go ahead! How do you want me?” 

“Qh, fling yourself down on a chair in one of 
your attitudes of studied negligence; and twist one 
corner of your mustache with affected absence of 
mind.” . 

“And you think I’m always studied, always af- 
fected ?” 

“T didn’t say so.” 

“J didn’t ask you what you said.” 

“ And I won’t tell you what I think.” 

“Ah, I know what you think.” 

“What made you ask, then?” The girl laughed 
with the satisfaction of her sex in cornering a man. 

Beaton made a show of not deigning to reply, 
and put himself in the pose she suggested, frowning. 

“ Ah, that’s it. But a little more animation. 

**¢ As when a great thought strikes along the brain, 
And flushes all the cheek.’”’ 

She put her forehead down on the back of her 
hand and laughed again. “ You ought to be photo- 
graphed. You look as if you were sitting for it.” 

Beaton said: “ That’s because I know I am being 
photographed, in one way. I don’t think you ought 
to call me affected. I never am so with you; I 
know it wouldn’t be of any use.” 

“Oh, Mr. Beaton, you flatter.” 

“‘No, I never flatter vou.” 

“TJ meant you flattered yourself.” 

iT How 7? 

“Oh, I don’t know. 

“T know what you mean. 
sincere with anybody.” 

“Oh, no I don’t.” 

“What do you think ?” 

“That you can’t—try.” 
torious laugh. 

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson would once have 
both feigned a great interest in Alma’s sketching 
Beaton, and made it the subject of talk, in which 
they approached as nearly as possible the real in- 
terest of their lives. Now they frankly remained 
away, in the dining-room, which was very cozy after 
the dinner had disappeared; the Colonel sat with his 
lamp and paper in the gallery beyond; Mrs. Leighton 
was about her house-keeping affairs, in the content 
she always felt when Alma was with Beaton. 

‘“‘They seem to be having a pretty good time in 
there,” said Fulkerson, detaching himself from his 
own absolute good time as well as he could. 

“At least Alma does,” said Miss Woodburn. 

“Do you think she cares for him ?”’ 

“‘Quahte as moch as he desoves.”’ 

‘“What makes you all down on Beaton around 
here? He’s not such a bad fellow.” 

‘““We awe not all doan on him. Mrs. Leighton 
isn’t doan on him.” 

“‘Oh, I guess if it was the old lady, there wouldn’t 
be much question about it.” 


Imagine.” 
You think I can’t be 


Alma gave another vic- 


Pa 


A Hazard of 


They both laughed, and Alma said, “They seem 
to be greatly amused with something in there.” 

“Me, probably,” said Beaton. ‘I seem to amuse 
everybody to-night.” 

“Don’t you always ?” 

“T always amuse you, I’m afraid, Alma.” 

She looked at him:as if she were going to snub 
him openly for using her name; but apparently she 
decided to do it covertly. ‘You didn’t at first. I 
‘really used to believe you could be serious once.” 

“Couldn’t you believe it again? Now?” 

“Not when you put on that wind-harp stop.” 

“Wetmore has been talking to you about me. 
He would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase. He 
spends his time making them.” 

“‘ He’s made some very pretty ones about you:” 

“Like the one you just quoted ?” 

“No, not exactly. He admires you ever so much. 
He says—” She stopped, teasingly. 

“What ?” 

“He says you could be almost anything you wish- 
ed, if you didn’t wish to be everything.” 

“That sounds more like the school of Wetmore. 
That’s what you say, Alma. Well, if there were 
something you wished me to be, I could be it.” 

“We might adapt Kingsley: ‘Be good, sweet 
maid, and let who will be clever.’”? He could not 
help laughing. She went on: “I always thought 
that was the most patronizing and exasperating 
thing ever addressed to a human girl; and we’ve 
had to stand a good deal in our time. I should 
like to have it applied to the other ‘sect’ awhile. 
_ As if any girl that was a girl would be good if she 
had the remotest chance of being clever !” 

“Then you wouldn’t wish me to be good?” 

“Not if you were a girl.” 

“You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I de- 
serve it. But if I were one-tenth part as good as 
you are, Alma, I should have a lighter heart than 
IT have now. I know as I’m fickle, but ’'m not 

false, as you think I am.’ 

“Who said I thought you were false ? oy 

“No one,” said Beaton. “It isn’t necessary, when 
you look it—live ine 

“Oh, dear! I didn’t ay I devoted my whole 
time to the subject.” 

“T know I’m despicable. I could tell you some- 
thing—the history of this day, even—that would 
make you despise me.” Beaton had in mind his 
purchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting 
in so effectively, with the money he ought to have 
sent his father. ‘‘ But,” he went on, darkly, with a 
sense that what he was that moment suffering for 
his selfishness must somehow be a kind of atone- 
ment, which would finally leave him to the guiltless 
enjoyment of the overcoat, “you wouldn’t believe 
the depths of baseness I could descend to.” 

“T would try,” said Alma, rapidly shading the 
collar, “if you’d give me some hint.” 


New Fortunes. 183 


Beaton had a sudden wish to pour out his re- 
morse to her, but he was afraid of her laughing 
at him. He said to himself that this was a very 
wholesome fear, and that if he could always have 
her at hand he should not make a fool of himself 
so often. A man conceives of such an office as the 
very noblest for a woman; he worships her for it 
if he ig magnanimous. But Beaton was silent, and 
Alma put back her head for the right distance on 
her sketch. ‘Mr. Fulkerson thinks you are the 
sublimest of human beings for advising him to get 
Colonel Woodburn to interview Mr. Dryfoos about 
Lindau. What have you ever done with your Ju- 
das ?” 

“T haven’t done anything with it. Nadel thought 
he would take hold of it at one time, but he dropped 
it again. After all, I don’t suppose it could be 
popularized. Fulkerson wanted to offer it as a 
premium to subscribers for Every Other Week, but 
I sat down on that.”’ - 

Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and 
she merely said, “‘ Hvery Other Week seems to be 
going on just the same as ever.” 

“Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. 
Fulkerson,” said Beaton, with a return to what they . 
were saying, ‘‘ has managed the whole business very 


well. But he exaggerates the value of my ad- 
vice.” 

“Very likely,” Alma suggested, vaguely. ‘Or 
no! Excuse me! He couldn’t, he couldn’t!” She 


laughed delightedly at Beaton’s foolish look of em- 
barrassment. 

He tried to recover his dignity in saying, ‘‘ He’s 
a very good fellow, and he deserves his happiness.” 

‘Qh, indeed !”? said Alma, perversely. ‘‘ Does any 
one deserve happiness ?” 

‘“‘T know I don’t,” sighed Beaton. 

“You mean you don’t get it.” 

“T certainly don’t get it.” 

‘“‘ Ah, but that isn’t the reason.” 

‘What is?” 

‘““That’s the secret of the universe.” She bit in 
her lower lip, and looked at him with eyes of gleam- 
ing fun. 

“ Are you never serious ?” he asked. 

“With serious people—always.”’ 

‘7 am serious; and you have the secret of my 
happiness—” He threw himself impulsively for- 
ward in his chair. 

‘Oh, pose, pose !”’ she cried. 

“T won't pose,” he answered, “‘and you have got 
to listen to me. You know I’m in love with you; 
and I know that once you cared for me. Can’t 
that time—won’t it—come back again? Try to 
think so, Alma!’ 

“No,” she said, briefly and seriously enough. 

“But that seems impossible. What is it Ive 
done—what have you against me?” 


“Nothing. But that time is past. Icouldn’t re» 


134 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


eall it if I wished. Why did you bring it up? 
You’ve broken your word. You know I wouldn’t 
have let you keep coming here if you hadn’t prom- 
ised never to refer to it.” 

“How could Ihelp it? With that happiness near 
us—Fulkerson—” 

“Oh, it’s that? I might have known it!” 

“No, it isn’t that—it’s something far deeper. But 
if it’s nothing you have against me, what is it, Alma, 
that keeps you from caring for me now as you did 
then? JI haven’t changed.” 

“But J have. I shall never care for you again, 
Mr. Beaton ; you might as well understand it once for 
all. Don’t think it’s anything in yourself, or that I 
think you unworthy of me. I’m not so self-satis- 
fied as that; I know very well that I’m not a perfect 
character, and that I’ve no claim on perfection in 
anybody else. I think women who want that are 
fools; they won’t get it, and they don’t deserve it. 
But I’ve learned a good deal more about myself 
than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of work, of 
art, and of art alone—that’s what I’ve made up my 
mind to.” 

‘““A woman that’s made up her mind to that has 
no heart to hinder her!” 

“Would a man have that had done so 2” 

“But I don’t believe you, Alma. You're merely 
laughing at me. And besides, with me you needn’t 
give up art. We could work together. You know 
how much I admire your talent. I believe I could 
help it—serve it; I would be its willing slave, and 
yours, Heaven knows!” 

“T don’t want any slave—nor any slavery. I want 
to be free—always. Nowdoyou see? I don’t care 
for you, and I never could, in the old way; but I 
should have to care for some one more than I be- 
lieve I ever shall, to give up my work. Shall we 
goon?” She looked at her sketch. 

‘‘No, we shall not go on,” he said, gloomily, as he 
rose. 

‘I suppose you blame me,” she said, rising too, 

“Oh no! I blame no one—or only myself. I 
threw my chance away.” 

“Tm glad you see that; and I’m glad you did it. 
You don’t believe me, of course. Why do men 
think life can be only the one thing to women? 
And if you come to the selfish view, who are the 
happy women? I’m sure that if work doesn’t fail 
me, health won’t, and happiness won’t.” 

“But you could work on with me—” 

“Second fiddle. Do you suppose I shouldn’t be 
woman enough to wish my work always less and 
Jower than yours? At least I’ve heart enough for 
that!” 

“You've heart enough for anything, Alma. I 
was a fool to say you hadn’t.” 

“I think the women who keep their hearts have 
an even chance, at least, of having heart—” 

“Ah, there’s where you’re wrong !” 


“But mine isn’t mine to give you, anyhow. And 
now I don’t want you ever to speak to me about 
this again.” 

“Oh, there’s no danger!” he cried, bitterly. “I 
shall never willingly see you again.” 

“That’s as you like, Mr. Beaton. We've had to 
be very frank, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be 
friends. Still, we needn’t, if you don’t like.” 

“And I may come—I may come here—as—as 
usual ?” 

“Why, if you can consistently,” she said, with 
a smile, and she held out her hand to him. 


He went home dazed, and feeling as if it were a 


bad joke that had been put upon him. At least the 
affair went so deep that it estranged the aspect of 
his familiar studio. Some of the things in it were 
not very familiar; he had spent lately a great deal 
on rugs, on stuffs, on Japanese bricabrac. When 
he saw these things in the shops he had felt that 
he must have them; that they were necessary to 
him; and he was partly in debt for them, still 
without having sent any of his earnings to pay his 
father. As he looked at them now he liked to 
fancy something weird and conscious in them as 
the silent witnesses of a broken life. He felt 
about among some of the smaller objects on the 
mantel for his pipe. Before he slept he was aware, 
in the luxury of his despair, of a remote relief, an 
escape; and, after all, the understanding he had 
come to with Alma was only the explicit formula- 
tion of terms long tacit between them. Beaton 
would have been puzzled more than he knew if she 
had taken him seriously. It was inevitable that he 
should declare himself in love with her; but he 
was not disappointed at her rejection of his love ; 
perhaps not so much as he would have been at its 
acceptance, though he tried to think otherwise, and 
to give himself airs of tragedy. He did not really 
feel that the result was worse than what had gone 
before, and it left him free. 

But he did not go to the Leightons’ again for so 
long a time that Mrs. Leighton asked Alma what 
had happened. Alma told her. 

“And he won’t come any more?” her mother 
sighed, with reserved censure. 

“Oh, I think he will. He couldn’t very well come 
the next night. But he has the habit of coming, 
and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything—even the 
habit of thinking he’s in love with some one.” 

“ Alma,” said her mother, “I don’t think it’s very 
nice for a girl to let a young man keep coming 
to see her after she’s refused him.” 

“Why not, if it amuses him and doesn’t hurt the 
girl ?” 

‘But it does hurt her, Alma. It—it’s indelicate. 
It isn’t fair to him; it gives him hopes.” 

‘Well, mamma, it hasn’t happened in the given 
case yet. If Mr. Beaton comes again I won’t see 
him, and you can forbid him the house.” 


Miss Dryfoos at others. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“(Tf I could only feel sure, Alma,” said her mo- 
ther, taking up another branch of the inquiry, “that 
you really knew your own mind, I should be easier 
about it.” 

“Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I 
do know my own mind;. and what’s worse, I know 
Mr. Beaton’s mind.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“JT mean that he spoke to me the other night, 
simply because Mr. Fulkerson’s engagement had 
broken him all up.” 

“ What expressions !” Mrs. Leighton lamented. 

“He let it out himself,’ Alma went on. ‘ And 
you wouldn’t have thought it was very flattering 
yourself. When I’m made love to, after this, I pre- 
fer to be made love to in an off year, when there 
isn’t another engaged couple anywhere about.” 

“Did you tell him that, Alma?” 

“Tell him that! What do you mean, mamma ? 
I may be indelicate, but ’m not quite so indelicate 
as that.” 

“TJ didn’t mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, 
but I wanted to warn you. I think Mr. Beaton was 
very much in earnest.” 

“Oh, so did he!” 

_“And you didn’t ?” 

“Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he’s very 
much in earnest with Miss Vance at times, and with 
Sometimes he’s a painter, 
and sometimes he’s an architect, and sometimes 
he’s a sculptor. He has too many gifts—too 
many tastes.” 

“ And if Miss Vance, and Miss Dryfoos—” 

“Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mam- 
ma! It’s getting so dreadfully personal !” 

“ Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your 
real feeling in the matter.” 

“And you know that I don’t want to let you— 
especially when I haven’t got any real feeling in the 
matter. But I should think—speaking in the ab- 
stract entirely—that if either of those arts was ever 


TE 


Tae winter did not renew for Christine and Mela 
the social opportunity which the spring had offered. 
After the musicale at Mrs. Horn’s, they both made 
their party call, as Mela said, in due season; but 
they did not find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither 
she nor Miss Vance came to see them after people 
returned to town in the fall. They tried to believe 
for a time that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards; 
this pretence failed them, and they fell back upon 
their pride, or rather Christine’s pride. Mela had 
little but her good-nature to avail her in any exi- 
gency, and if Mrs. Horn or Miss Vance had come to 


all after a year of neglect, she would have received 


135 


going to be in earnest about him, it would want his 
exclusive devotion for a week at least.” 

“TY didn’t know,” said Mrs. Leighton, “that he 
was doing anything now at the others. I thought he 
was entirely taken up with his work on Hvery Other 
Week.” 

“Oh, he is! He is!” 

‘“‘ And you certainly can’t say that he hasn’t been 
very kind—very useful to you, in that matter.” 

“‘ And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude ? 
Thank you, mamma! I didn’t know you held me so 
cheap.”’ 

“You know whether I hold you cheap or not, 
Alma. I don’t want you to cheapen yourself. I 
don’t want you to trifle with any one. I want you 
to be honest with yourself.” 

“Well, come now, mamma! Suppose you begin. 
I’ve been perfectly honest with myself, and I’ve been 
honest with Mr. Beaton. I don’t care for him, and 
I’ve told him I didn’t; so he may be supposed to 
know it. If he comes here after this, he’ll come as 
a plain, unostentatious friend of the family, and 
it’s for you to say whether he shall come in that 
capacity or not. I hope you won’t trifle with him, 
and let him get the notion that he’s coming on any 
other basis.” 

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical 
attitude far too keenly to abandon it for anything 
constructive. She only said, “ You know very well, 
Alma, that’s a matter Ican have nothing to do with.” 

“Then you leave him entirely to me ?” 

“*T hope you will regard his right to candid and 
open treatment.” 

‘“‘ He’s had nothing but the most open and candid 
treatment from me, mamma. It’s you that want 
to play fast and loose with him. And to tell you 
the truth, I believe he would like that a good deal 
better; I believe that if there’s anything he hates, 
it’s openness and candor.” . 

Alma laughed, and put her arms round her mo- 
ther, who could not help laughing a little too. 


them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in 
coming. But Christine had drawn a line, beyond 
which they would not have been forgiven; and she 
had planned the words and the behavior with which 
she would have punished them if they had appeared 
then. Neither sister imagined herself in anywise 
inferior to them; but Christine was suspicious, at 
least, and it was Mela who invented the hypothesis 
of the lost cards. As nothing happened to prove 
or to disprove the fact, she said, ‘‘I move we put 
Coonrod up to gittun’ it out of Miss Vance, at some 
of their meetings.” 
“Tf you do,” said Christine, “Tl kill you.” 


136 


Christine, however, had the visits of Beaton to 
console her, and if these seemed to have no definite 
aim, she was willing to rest in the pleasure they 
- gave her vanity; but Mela had nothing. Sometimes 
she even wished they were all back on the farm. 

“Tt would be the best thing for both of you,” 
said Mrs. Dryfoos, in answer to such a burst of des- 
peration. “I don’t think New York is any place 
for girls.” 

“Well, what I hate, mother,” said Mela, ‘is, it 
don’t seem to be any place for young men, either.” 
She found this so good when she had said it that 
she laughed over it till Christine was angry. 

“A body would think there had never been any 
joke before.” 

“T don’t see as it’s a joke,” said Mrs. Dryfoos. 
“Tt’s the plain truth.” 

‘Oh, don’t mind her, mother,” said Mela. ‘‘She’s 
put out because her old Mr. Beaton ha’n’t been 
round for a couple o’ weeks. If you don’t watch 
out, that fellow ll give you the slip, yit, Christine, 
after all your pains.” 

‘““Well, there ain’t anybody to give yow the slip, 
Mela,” Christine clawed back. 

“No; I ha’n’t ever set my traps for anybody.” 
This was what Mela said for want of a better re- 
tort; but it was not quite true. When Kendricks 
came with Beaton to call after her father’s dinner, 
she used all her cunning to insnare him, and she 
had him to herself as long as Beaton staid; Dry- 
foos sent down word that he was not very well, 
and had gone to bed. The novelty of Mela had 
worn off for Kendricks, and she found him, as she 
frankly told him, not half as entertaining as he was 
at Mrs. Horn’s; but she did her best with him as 
the only flirtable material which had yet come to 
her hand. It would have been her ideal to have 
the young men stay till past midnight, and her fa- 
ther come down-stairs in his stocking feet, and tell 
them it was time to go. But they made a visit of 
decorous brevity, and Kendricks did not come again. 
She met him afterward, once, as she was crossing 
the pavement in Union Square, to get into her 
coupé, and made the most of him; but it was ne- 
cessarily very little, and so he passed out of her 
life without having left any trace in her heart, 
though Mela had a heart that she would have put 
at the disposition of almost any young man that 
wanted it. Kendricks himself, Manhattan cockney 
as he was, with scarcely more outlook into the aver- 
age American nature than if he had been kept a 
prisoner in New York society all his days, perceived 
a property in her which forbade him as a man of 
conscience to trifle with her; something earthly 
good and kind, if it was simple and vulgar. In 
revising his impressions of her, it seemed to him 
that she would come even to better literary effect if 
this were recognized in her; and it made her sacred, 
in spite of her willingness to fool and to be fooled, 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


in her merely human quality. : After all, he saw 
that she wished honestly to love and to be loved, 


and the lures she threw out to that end seemed to: 


him pathetic rather than ridiculous; he could not 


join Beaton in laughing at her; and he did not like 


Beaton’s laughing at the other girl, either. It seem- 
ed to Kendricks, with the code of honor which he 
mostly kept to himself because he was a little 
ashamed to find there were so few others like it, 
that if Beaton cared nothing for the other girl— 
and Christine appeared simply detestable to Ken- 
dricks—he had better keep away from her, and not. 
give her the impression he was in love with her. 
He rather fancied that this was the part of a gen- 


tleman, and he could not have penetrated to that. 


eesthetic and moral complexity which formed the 
consciousness of a nature like Beaton, and was 
chiefly a torment to itself; he could not have con- 
ceived of the wayward impulses indulged at every 
moment in little things, till the straight highway 
was traversed and wellnigh lost under their tangle. 
To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing 
that one likes, even though one continues to do 
what one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of 
twenty-seven, was still too young to understand this. 

Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps be- 
cause he was not yet twenty-seven. He only knew 
that his will was somehow sick; that it spent 
itself in caprices, and brought him no happiness. 
from the fulfilment of the most vehement wish. 
But he was aware that his wishes grew less and 
less vehement; he began to have a fear that some 
time he might have none at all. It seemed to him 
that if he could once do something that was- 
thoroughly distasteful to himself, he might make a 
beginning in the right direction; but when he tried 
this on a small scale it failed, and it seemed stupid. 
Some sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he- 
was sure; but he could not think of anything in 
particular to expiate; a man could not expiate his. 
temperament, and his temperament was what Bea- 
ton decided to be at fault. He perceived that it 
went deeper than even fate would have gone; he 
could have fulfilled an evil destiny and had done 
with it, however terrible. His trouble was that he 
could not escape from himself; and for the most. 
part, he justified himself in refusing to try. After 
he had come to that distinct understanding with 
Alma Leighton, and experienced the relief it really 
gave him, he thought for a while that if it had fallen: 
out otherwise, and she had put him in charge of her: 
destiny, he might have been better able to manage: 
his own. But as it was, he could only drift, and 
let all other things take their course. It was ne- 
cessary that he should go to see her afterward, to- 


show her that he was equal to the event; but he ~ 


did not go so often, and he went rather oftener to. 
the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret. 
Vance, except on the society terms. With muck 


ete 


A Hazard of New fortunes. 


sneering and scorning, he fulfilled the duties to Mrs. 
Horn without which he knew he should be dropped 
from her list; but one might go to many of her 
Thursdays without getting many words with her 
niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted 
many; the girl kept the charm of her innocent sty- 
lishness ; but latterly she wanted to talk more about 
social questions than about the psychical problems 
that young people usually debate so personally. Son 
of the working people as he was, Beaton had never 
eared anything about such matters; he did not 
know about them or wish to know; he was perhaps 
too near them. Besides, there was an embarrass- 
ment, at least on her part, concerning the Dryfooses. 
She was too high-minded to blame him for having 
tempted her to her failure with them by his talk 


about them; but she was conscious of avoiding 


them in her talk. She had decided not to renew 
the effort she had made in the spring; because she 
could not do them good as fellow-creatures needing 
food and warmth and work, and she would not try 
to befriend them socially; she had a horror of any 
such futile sentimentality. She would have liked 


to account to Beaton in this way for a course which 


she suspected he must have heard their comments 
upon, but she did not quite know how to do it; she 


could not be sure how much or how little he cared 


for them. Some tentative approaches which she 
made toward explanation were met with such eager 


disclaim of personal interest that she knew less than 


before what to think; and she turned the talk from 
the sisters to the brother, whom it seemed she still 
continued to meet in their common work among the 
poor. 

“He seems very different,” she ventured. 
“Qh, quite,” said Beaton. “He’s the kind of 


person that you might suppose gave the Catholics 


a hint for the cloistral life; he’s a cloistered nature 
—the nature that atones and suffers for. But he’s 
awfully dull company, don’t you think? I never 


can get anything out of him.” 


“ He’s very much in earnest.” 

“‘Remorselessly. We've got a profane and mun- 
dane creature’ there at the office who runs us all, 
and it’s shocking merely to see the contact of the 
two natures. When Fulkerson gets to joking Dry- 
foos—he likes to put his joke in the form of a pre- 
tence that Dryfoos is actuated by a selfish motive, 
that he has an eye to office, and is working up a 
political interest for himself on the Hast side—it’s 
something inexpressible.” 

“T should think so,” said Miss Vance, with such 
lofty disapproval that Beaton felt himself included 
in it for having merely told what caused it. 

He could not help saying, in natural rebellion, 


_ “Well, the man of one idea is always a little ri- 


_ diculous.” 


“ When his idea is right?” she demanded. “A 


right idea can’t be ridiculous.” 


“Oh, I only said, the man that held it alone. 
He’s flat; he has no relief, no projection.” 

She seemed unable to answer, and he perceived 
that he had silenced her to his own disadvantage. 
It appeared to Beaton that she was becoming a lit- 


tle too exacting for comfort in her idealism. He 


put down the cup of tea he had been taSting, and 
said, in his solemn staccato, ‘I must go. Good- 
by!’ and got instantly away from her, with an effect 
he had of having suddenly thought of something: 
imperative. 

He went up to Mrs. Horn for a moment’s hail 
and farewell, and felt himself subtly detained by 
her through fugitive passages of conversation with 
half a dozen other people. He fancied that at crises 
of this strange interview Mrs. Horn’ was about to 
become confidential with him, and confidential, of 
all things, about her niece. She ended by not hav-. 
ing palpably been so. In fact, the concern in her 
mind would have been difficult to impart to a young: 
man, and after several experiments Mrs. Horn found 
it impossible to say that she wished Margaret could 
somehow be interested in lower things than those 
which occupied her. She had watched with grow- 
ing anxiety the girl’s tendency to various kinds of 
self-devotion. She had dark hours in which she 
even feared her entire withdrawal from the world 
in a life of good works. Before now, girls had en- 
tered the Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so: 
potently to the young and generous imagination,. 
and Margaret was of just the temperament to be 
influenced by them. During the past summer she: 
had been unhappy at her separation from the cares 
that had engrossed her more and more as their stay 
in the city drew to an end in the spring, and she 
had hurried her aunt back to town earlier in the 
fall than she would have chosen to come. Margaret. 
had her correspondents among the working-women 
whom she befriended. Mrs. Horn was at one time 
alarmed to find that Margaret was actually promo- 
ting a strike of the button-hole workers. 
course, had its ludicrous side, in connection with a 
young lady in good society, and a person of even 
so little humor as Mrs. Horn could not help seeing: 
it, At the same time she could not help foreboding 
the worst from it; she was afraid that Margaret’s 


health would give way under the strain, and that if 


she did not go into a sisterhood she would at least 
go into a decline. She began the winter with all 
such counteractive measures as she could employ. 
At an age when such things weary, she threw her- 
self into the pleasures of society with the hope of 
dragging Margaret after her; and a sympathetic 
witness must have followed with compassion her 
course from ball to ball, from reception to reception, 
from parlor reading to parlor reading, from musicale: 
to musicale, from play to play, from opera to opera. 
She tasted, after she had practically renounced them, 
the bitter and the insipid flavors of fashionable 


137 


This, of © 


& 


138 A Hazard of 


amusement, in the hope that Margaret might find 
them sweet, and now at the end she had to own to 
herself that she had failed. It was coming Lent 
again, and the girl had only grown thinner and more 
serious with the diversions that did not divert her 
from the baleful works of beneficence on which Mrs. 
Horn felt that she was throwing her youth away. 
Margaret could have borne either alone, but togeth- 
er they were wearing her out. She felt it a duty to 
undergo the pleasures her aunt appointed for her, 
but she could not forego the other duties in which 
she found her only pleasure. 

She kept up her music still because she could 
employ it at the meetings for the entertainment, 
and, as she hoped, the elevation of her working- 
women; but she neglected the other esthetic inter- 
ests which once occupied her; and at sight of Bea- 
ton talking with her, Mrs. Horn caught at the hope 
that he might somehow be turned to account in re- 
viving Margaret’s former interest in art. She asked 
him if Mr. Wetmore had his classes that winter as 
usual; and she said she wished Margaret could be 
induced to go again: Mr. Wetmore always said that 
she did not draw very well, but that she had a great 
deal of feeling for it, and her work was interesting. 
She asked, were the Leightons in town again; and 
she murmured a regret that she had not been able 
to see anything of them, without explaining why; 
she said she had a fancy that if Margaret knew 
Miss Leighton, and what she was doing, it might 
stimulate her, perhaps. She supposed Miss Leigh- 
ton was still going on with her art ? 

Beaton said Oh yes, he believed so. 

But his manner did not encourage Mrs. Horn to 
pursue her aims in that direction, and she said, with 
a sigh, she wished fe still had a class; she always 
fancied that Margaret got more good from his in- 
struction than from any one else’s. 

He said that she was very good; but there was 
really nobody who knew half as much as Wetmore, 
or could make any one understand half as much. 

Mrs. Horn was afraid, she said, that Mr. Wet- 
more’s terrible sincerity discouraged Margaret; he 
would not let her have any illusions about the out- 
come of what she was doing; and did not Mr. Beaton 
think that some illusion was necessary with young 
people? Of course it was very nice of Mr. Wet- 
more to be so honest, but it did not always seem 
to be the wisest thing. She begged Mr. Beaton to 
try to think of some one who would be a little less 
severe. Her tone assumed a deeper interest in the 
people who were coming up and going away, and 
Beaton perceived that he was dismissed. 

He went away with vanity flattered by the sense 
of having been appealed to concerning Margaret, 
and then he began to chafe at what she had said 
of Wetmore’s honesty, apropos of her wish that he 
still had a class himself. Did she mean, confound 
her! that he was insincere, and would lot Miss Vance 


New Fortunes. 


suppose she had more-talent than she really had? 
The more Beaton thought of this, the more furious 
he became, and the more he was convinced that 
something like it had been unconsciously if not con- 
sciously in her mind. He framed some keen re- 
torts, to the general effect that with the atmos- 
phere of illusion preserved so completely at home, 
Miss Vance hardly needed it in her art studies, 
Having just determined never to go near Mrs. Horn’s 
Thursdays again, he decided to go once more, in 
order to plant this sting in her capacious but some- 
what callous bosom; and he planned how he would 
lead the talk up to the point from which he should 
launch it. 

In the mean time he felt the need of some pre- 
sent solace, such as only unqualified worship could 
give him; a cruel wish to feel his power in some 
direction where, even if it were resisted, it could 
not be overcome, drove him on. That a woman 
who was to Beaton the embodiment of artificiality 
should intimate, however innocently—the innocence 
made it all the worse—that he was less honest than 
Wetmore, whom he knew to be so much more hon- 
est, was something that must be retaliated some- 
where before his self-respect could be restored. It 
was only five o’clock, and he went on uptown to the 
Dryfooses’, though he had been there only the night 
before last. He asked for the ladies, and Mrs. 
Mandel received him. 

“The young ladies are down-town shopping,” she 
said, “but I am very glad of the opportunity of see- 
ing you alone, Mr. Beaton. You know I lived sev- 
eral years in Europe.” 

“Yes,” said Beaton, wondering what that could 
have to do with her pleasure in Seeing him alone. 
“TI believe so?” He involuntarily gave his words 
the questioning inflection. , 

“You have lived abroad, too, and so you won't 
find what I am going to ask so strange. Mr. Bea- 
ton, why do you come so much to this house?” 
Mrs. Mandel bent forward with an aspect of lady- 
like interest, and smiled. 

Beaton frowned. “Why do I come so much?” 

“¢ Yes.?? 

“Why do I— Excuse me, Mrs. Mandel, but will 
you allow me to ask why you ask 2” 

‘Oh, certainly. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t 
say, for I wish you to be very frank with me. I 
ask because there are two young ladies in this 
house; and, in a certain way, I have to take the 
place of a mother to them. TI needn’t explain why; 
you know all the people here, and you understand. 
I have nothing to say about them, but I should not 
be speaking to you now if they were not all rather 
helpless people. They do not know the world they 
have come to live in here, and they cannot help 
themselves nor one another. But you do know it, 
Mr. Beaton, and I am sure you know just how much 
or how little you mean by coming here. You are 


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4nd . 


“¢Ry HEAVENS! THIS IS PILING IT UP,’ HE SAID TO HIMSELF.” 


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1 


If you are not— 
- but the smile had grown more perfunctory, and it 


ly kept to himself. 
a social nullity, with a kind of pity, to be sure, as a 
_ivilized person living among such people as the 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


either interested in one of these young girls or you 
are not. If you are, I have nothing more to say. 
”” Mrs. Mandel continued to smile, 


had an icy gleam. 
Beaton looked at her with surprise that he grave- 
He had always regarded her as 


Dryfooses, but not without a humorous contempt; 
he had thought of her as Mandel, and sometimes 
as old Mandel, though she was not half a score of 
years his senior, and was still well on the sunny side 
of forty. He reddened, and then turned an angry 
“Hixcuse me again, Mrs. Mandel. Do you 
ask this from the young ladies ?” 

“Certainly not,” she said, with the best caper 


and with something in her tone that convicted Bea- 


ton of vulgarity in putting his question of her au- 
thority in the form of a sneer. “As I have sug- 


gested, they would hardly know how to help them- 
selves at all in such a matter. 


I have no objection 
to saying that I ask it from the father of the young 
Jadies. Of course, in and for myself I should have 
no right to know anything about your affairs. I as- 
‘sure you the duty of knowing isn’t very pleasant.” 
The little tremor in her clear voice struck Beaton 


as something rather nice. 


“T can very well believe that, Mrs. Mandel,” he 
said, with a dreamy sadness in his own. He lifted 
his eyes, and looked into hers. “If I told you that 


I cared nothing about them in the way you inti- 
mate?” 


“Then I should prefer to let you characterize 


your own conduct in continuing to come here for 
_ the year past, as you have done, and tacitly leading 


them on to infer differently.” They both mechani- 
cally kept up the fiction of plurality in speaking 


of Christine, but there was no doubt in the mind of 


' mind, and none of them were flattering. 


either which of the young ladies the other meant. 

A good many thoughts went through Beaton’s 
He had 
not been unconscious that the part he had played 
toward this girl was ignoble, and that it had grown 
‘meaner as the fancy which her beauty had at first 
kindled in him had grown cooler. He was aware 
that of late he had been amusing himself with her 
passion in a way that was not less than cruel, not 
because he wished to do so, but because he was 
listless and wished nothing. He rose in saying, 
“T might be a little more lenient than you think, 
Mrs. Mandel; but I won’t trouble you with any pal- 
liating theory. I will not come any more.” 

He bowed, and Mrs. Mandel said, “Of course, it’s 
only your action that I am concerned with.” 

She seemed to him merely triumphant, and he 
could not conceive what it had cost her to nerve 
herself up to her too easy victory. He left Mrs. 
Mandel to a far harder lot than had fallen to him, 


139 


and he went. away hating her as an enemy who had 
humiliated him at a moment when he particularly 
needed exalting. It was really very simple for him 
to stop going to see Christine Dryfoos, but it was 
not at all simple for Mrs. Mandel to deal with the 
consequences of his not coming. He only thought 
how lightly she had stopped him, and the poor wo- 
man whom he had left trembling for what she had 
been obliged to do embodied for him the conscience 
that accused him of unpleasant things. 

“By heavens! this is piling it up,” he said to 
himself through his set teeth, realizing how it had 
happened right on top of that stupid insult from 
Mrs. Horn. Now he should have to give up his 
place on Hvery Other Week; he could not keep that, 
under the circumstances, even if some pretence were 
not made to get rid of him; he must hurry and an- 
ticipate any such pretence; he must see Fulkerson 
at once; he wondered where he should find him 
at that hour. He thought, with bitterness so real 
that it gave him a kind of tragical satisfaction, how 
certainly he could find him a little later at Mrs. 
Leighton’s; and Fulkerson’s happiness became ‘an 
added injury. 

The thing had of course come about just at the 
wrong time. There never had been a time when 
Beaton needed money more; when he had spent 
what he had and what he expected to have so 
recklessly. He was in debt to Fulkerson personally 
and officially for advance payments of salary. The 
thought of sending money home made him break 
into a scoffing laugh, which he turned into a cough 
in order to deceive the passers. What sort of face 
should he go to Fulkerson with and tell him that 
he renounced his employment on Hvery Other Week ; 
and what should he do when he had renounced it ? 
Take pupils, perhaps; open a class? A lurid con- 
ception of a class conducted on those principles of 
shameless flattery at which Mrs. Horn had hinted 
—he believed now she had meant to insult hin— 
presented itself. Why should not he act upon the 
suggestion? He thought—with loathing for the 
whole race of women-dabblers in art—how easy the 
thing would be: as easy as to turn back now and 
tell that old fool’s girl that he loved her, and rake 
in half his millions. Why should not he do that? 
No one else cared for him; and at a year’s end, 
probably, one woman would be like another as far 
as the love was concerned, and probably he should 
not be more tired if the woman were Christine Dry- 
foos than if she were Margaret Vance. He kept 
Alma Leighton out of the question, because at the 
bottom of his heart he believed that she must be 
forever unlike every other woman to him. 

The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had 
carried him far down-town, he thought; but when 
he looked up from it to see where he was, he found 
himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirty- 
ninth Street, very hot and blown; that idiotic fur 


140 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


overcoat was stifling. He could not possibly walk 
down to Eleventh; he did not want to walk even 
to the Elevated station at Thirty-fourth ; he stopped 
at the corner to wait for a surface-car, and fell 
again into his bitter fancies. After a while he 
roused himself and looked up the track, but there 
was no car coming. He found himself beside a 
policeman, who was lazily swinging his club by its 
thong from his wrist. 

‘““When do you suppose a car will be along ?” he 
asked, rather in a general sarcasm of the absence of 
the cars than in any special belief that the police- 
man could tell him. 

The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco 
Juice into the gutter. ‘In about a week,” he said, 
nonchalantly. 

‘“What’s the matter ?” asked Beaton, wondering 
what the joke could be. 

“Strike,” said the policeman. His interest in 
Beaton’s ignorance seemed to overcome his con- 
tempt of it. “ Knocked off everywhere this morn- 
ing except Third Avenue and one or two cross-town 
lines.” He spat again and kept his bulk at its in- 
cline over the gutter to glance at a group of men 
on the corner below. They were neatly dressed, 
and looked like something better than workingmen, 
and they had a holiday air of being in their best 
clothes. 

“Some of the strikers ?” asked Beaton. 

The policeman nodded. 

*“ Any trouble yet ?” 

“There won’t be any trouble till we begin to move 
the cars,” said the policeman. 

Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the 
men whose action would now force him to walk 
five blocks and mount the stairs of the Elevated 
station. “If you’d take out eight or ten of those 
fellows,” he said, ferociously, “and set them up 
against a wall and shoot them, you’d save a great 
deal of bother.” 

“T guess we sha’n’t have to shoot much,” said 
the policeman, still swinging his locust. ‘“ Any- 


way, we sha’n’t begin it. If it comes to a fight, — 
though,” he said, with a look at the men under the 


scooping rim of his helmet, “ we can drive the whole 


six thousand of ’em into the East River without. 


pullin’ a trigger.” 

“Are there six thousand in it ?” 

“ About.” 

“What do the infernal fools expect to live on?” 

“The interest of their money, I suppose,” said 
the officer, with a grin of satisfaction in his irony. 
“Tt’s got to run its course. Then they’ll come back 
with their heads tied up and their tails between 
their legs, and plead to be taken on again.” 

“If I was a manager of the roads,” said Beaton, 
thinking of how much he was already inconven- 
ienced by the strike, and obscurely connecting it as. 
one of the series with the wrongs he had suffered 
at the hands of Mrs. Horn and Mrs. Mandel, “TI 
would see them starve before I’d take them back— 
every one of them.” 

“Well,” said the policeman, impartially, as a man 
might whom the companies allowed to ride free, but. 
who had made friends with a good many drivers 
and conductors in the course of his free riding, “I 
guess that’s what the roads would like to do if they 
could; but the men are too many for them, and 
there ain’t enough other men to take their places.” 

“No matter,” said Beaton, severely. ‘They can 
bring in men from other places.” 

‘Oh, they'll do that fast enough,” said the police- 
man. 

A man came out of the saloon on the corner where 
the strikers were standing, noisy drunk, and they 
began, as they would have said, to have some fun 
with him. The policeman left Beaton, and saun- 
tered slowly down toward the group as if in the 
natural course of an afternoon ramble. On the 
other side of the street Beaton could see another 
officer sauntering up from the block below. Look- 
ing up and down the avenue, so silent of its horse- 
car bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It. 
was rather impressive, 


II. 


Tue strike made a good deal of talk in the 
office of Hvery Other Week—that is, it made Ful- 
kerson talk a good deal. He congratulated himself 
that he was not personally incommoded by it, like 
some of the fellows who lived uptown and had not 
everything under one roof, as it were. He enjoyed 
the excitement of it, and he kept the office-boy run- 
ning out to buy the extras which the newsmen 
came crying through the street almost every hour 
with a lamentable, unintelligible noise. He read 
not only the latest intelligence of the strike, but the 
editorial comments on it, which praised the firm at- 


titude of both parties, and the admirable measures: 
taken by the police to preserve order. Fulkerson 
enjoyed the interviews with the police captains and 
the leaders of the strike; he equally enjoyed the. 
attempts of the reporters to interview the road. 
managers, which were so graphically detailed, and 
with such a fine feeling for the right use of scare- 
heads as to have almost the value of direct ex- 
pressions from them, though it seemed that they 
had resolutely refused to speak. He said, at. 
second-hand from the papers, that if the men be- 
haved themselves and respected the rights of prop- 


_ splendid courage of the police. 


ers to submit their grievance. 


- used before. 
tween the police and the strikers when the roads 
ried to move their cars with men imported from 


A Hazard of 


erty, they would have public sympathy with them 
eyery time; but just as soon as they began to in- 
terfere with the roads’ right to manage their own 


affairs in their own way, they must be put down with 


an iron hand; the phrase “iron hand” did Fulker- 
son almost as much good. as if it had never been 
News began to come of fighting be- 


Philadelphia, and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the 
At the same time 
he believed what the strikers said, and that the 
trouble was not made by them, but by gangs of 
roughs acting without their approval. In this junc- 
iture he was relieved by the arrival of the State 


Board of Arbitration, which took up its quarters, 


with a great many scare-heads, at one of the prin- 
cipal hotels, and invited the roads and the strikers 
to lay the matter in dispute before them; he said 


that now we should see the working of the greatest 


piece of social machinery in modern times. But it 
appeared to work only in the alacrity of the strik- 
The roads were as 
one road in declaring that there was nothing to ar- 
bitrate, and that they were merely asserting their 
right to manage their own affairs in their own way. 
‘One of the presidents was reported to have told 


- a member of the Board, who personally summoned 


him, to get out and to go about his business. Then, 
to Fulkerson’s extreme disappointment, the august 


_ tribunal, acting on behalf of the sovereign people 


in the interest of peace, declared itself powerless 
and got out, and would, no doubt, have gone about 
its business if it had had any. Fulkerson did not 


_know what to say, perhaps because the extras did 


not; but March laughed at this result. 

“Ts a good deal like the military manoeuvre of 
the King of France and his forty thousand men. 
I suppose somebody told him at the top of the hill 
that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out 


and go about his business, and that was the reason 


he marched down after he had marched up with all 
that ceremony. What amuses me is to find that 
in an affair of this kind the roads have rights and 
the strikers have rights, but the public has no rights 
at all. The roads and the strikers are allowed to 
fight out a private war in our midst—as thoroughly 
‘and precisely a private war as any we despise the 
Middle Ages for having tolerated—as any street war 


in Florence or Verona—and to fight it out at our 


pains and expense, and we stand by like sheep, and 
wait till they get tired. It’s a funny attitude for a 
city of fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants,” 

“What would you do?” asked Fulkerson, a good 
‘deal daunted by this view of the case. 

“Do? Nothing. Hasn’t the State Board of Ar- 
bitration declared itself powerless? We have no 
hold upon the strikers ; and we’re so used to being 
‘snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we 


New Fortunes. 141 


have forgotten our hold on the roads, and always 
allow them to manage their own affairs in their own 
way, quite as if we had nothing to do with them, and 
they owed us no services in return for their privi- 
leges.” 

“That’s a good deal so,” said Fulkerson, disor- 
dering his hair. ‘* Well, it’s nuts for the Colonel, 
nowadays. He says if he was boss of this town he 
would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and 
man ’em with policemen, and run ’em till the man- 
agers had come to terms with the strikers; and 
he’d do that every time there was a strike.” 

“ Doesn’t that rather savor of the paternalism he 
condemned in Lindau ?” asked March. 

““T don’t know. It savors of horse-sense.”’ 

“You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought 
you were the most engaged man I ever saw; but 
T guess you’re more father-in-lawed. And before 
you're married too.” 

““ Well, the Colonel’s a glorious old fellow, March. 
I wish he had the power to do that thing, just for 
the fun of looking on while he waltzed in. He’s 
on the keen jump from morning till night, and he’s 
up late and early, to see the row. I’m afraid he’ll 
get shot at some of the fights; he sees them all; I 
can’t get any show at them: haven’t seen a brick- 
bat shied or a club swung yet. Have you?” 

‘““No; I find I can philosophize the situation 
about as well from the papers, and that’s what I 
really want to do, I suppose. Besides, I’m solemnly 
pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of 
crowd, under penalty of having her bring the chil- 
dren and go with me. Her theory is that we must 
all die together ; the children haven’t been at school 
since the strike began. There’s no precaution that 
Mrs. March hasn’t used. She watches me whenever 
I go out, and sees that I start straight for this 
office.” | 

Fulkerson laughed and said: “‘ Well, it’s probably 
the only thing that’s saved your life. Have you 
seen anything of Beaton lately ?” 

“No. You don’t mean to say he’s killed !” 

“Not if he knows it. ButI don’t know— What 
do you say, March? What’s the reason you couldn’t 
get us up a paper on the strike?” 

“T knew it would fetch round to Every Other 
Week, somehow.” | 

“‘No, but seriously. There’ll be plenty of news- 
paper accounts. But you could treat it in the his- 
torical spirit—like something that happened several 
centuries ago; De Foe’s Plague of London style. 
Heigh? What made me think of it was Beaton. 
If I could get hold of him, you two could go round 
together and take down its esthetic aspects. It’s 
a big thing, March, this strike is. I tell you it’s 
imposing to have a private war, as you say, fought 
out this way, in the heart of New York, and New 
York not minding it a bit, See? Might take that 
view of it. With your descriptions and Beaton’s 


142 


sketches—well, it would just be the greatest card! 
Come! What do you say ?” 

“Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs. 
March if I’m killed, and she and the children are 
not killed with me ?” . 

“Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how it 
would do to get Kendricks to do the literary part ?” 

“T’ve no doubt he’d jump at the chance. I’ve 
yet to see the form of literature that Kendricks 
wouldn’t lay down his life for.” 

“Say!” March perceived that Fulkerson was 
about to vent another inspiration, and smiled patient- 
ly. ‘Look here! What’s the reason we couldn’t 
get one of the strikers to write it up for us ?” 

““Might have a symposium of strikers and presi- 
dents,” March suggested. 

“No; Pm in earnest. They say some of those 
fellows — especially the foreigners—are educated 
men. I know one fellow—a Bohemian—that used 
to edit a Bohemian newspaper here. He could write 
it out in his kind of Dutch, and we could get Lin- 
dau to translate it.” 

“‘T guess not,” said March, dryly. 

“Why not? He’d do it for the cause, wouldn’t 
he? Suppose you put it up on him, the next time 
you see him.” 

“T don’t see Lindau any more,” said March. He 
added, ‘‘I guess he’s renounced me along with Mr. 
Dryfoos’s money.” 

“Pshaw! You don’t mean he hasn’t been round 
since ?” 

‘““He came for a while, but he’s left off coming 
now. I don’t feel particularly gay about it,’ March 
said, with some resentment of Fulkerson’s grin. 
““He’s left me in debt to him for lessons to the 
children.” 

Fulkerson laughed out. ‘ Well, he is the greatest 
old fool! Who'd ’a’ thought he’d ’a’ been in earn- 
est with those ‘brincibles’ of his? But I suppose 
there have to be just such cranks; it takes all kinds 
to make a world.” 

“There has to be one such crank, it seems,’”’ March 
partially assented. ‘“One’s enough for me.” 

“T reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too,” said 
Fulkerson. ‘‘ Why, it must act like a schooner of 
beer on him all the while, to see ‘ gabidal’ embar- 
rassed like it is by this strike. It must make old 
Lindau feel like he was back behind those barricades 
at Berlin. Well, he’s a splendid old fellow; pity he 
drinks, as I remarked once before.” 

When March left the office he did not go home so 
directly as he came, perhaps because Mrs. March’s 
eye was not on him. He was very curious about 
some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a 
great social convulsion, he felt people did not recog- 
nize; and with his temperance in everything, he 
found its negative expressions as significant as its 
more violent phases. He had promised his wife 
solemnly that he would keep away from these, and 


‘quietly about in groups on the corners. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; 


he had no wish to be that peaceful spectator who 
always gets shot when there is any firing on a mob. 
He interested himself in the apparent indifference 


of the mighty city, which kept on about its business. 
as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out. 


in its midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles 
on the frontier; and he realized how there might 
once have been a street feud of forty years in Flor- 
ence without interfering materially with the indus- 
try and prosperity of the city. On Broadway there 
was a silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car 


bells and hoofs had been, but it was not very notice- c xt 
able; and on the avenues, roofed by the elevated — 
roads, this silence of the surface tracks was not no- 


ticeable at all in the roar of the trains overhead. 
Some of the cross-town cars were beginning to run 
again, with a policeman on the rear of each; on the 
Third Avenue line, operated by non-union men, who 
had not struck, there were two policemen beside the 
driver of every car, and two beside the conductor, to 
protect them from the strikers. But there were no. 
strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue they stood 
While 
March watched them at a safe distance, a car laden 
with policemen came down the track, but none of 
the strikers offered to molest it. In their simple 
Sunday best, March thought them very quiet, decent- 
looking people, and he could well believe that they 
had nothing to do with the riotous outbreaks in 
other parts of the city. He could hardly believe 
that there were any such outbreaks; he began 
more and more to think them mere newspaper 
exaggerations in the absence of any disturbance, 
or the disposition to it, that he could see. He 
walked on to the East River: Avenues A, B, and 
C presented the same quiet aspect as Second Avenue; 
groups of men stood on the corners, and now and 
then a police-laden car was brought unmolested 
down the tracks before them; they looked at it 
and talked together, and some laughed, but there 
was no trouble. 

March got a cross-town car, and came back to the 
west side. A policeman, looking very sleepy and 
tired, lounged on the platform. 

““T suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is 
over,” March suggested as he got in. 

The officer gave him a surly glance and made him 
no answer. 

His behavior, from a man born to the joking give 
and take of our life, impressed March. It gave him 
a fine sense of the ferocity which he had read of 
the French troops putting on toward the populace 
just before the coup d’état; he began to feel like 
populace; but he struggled with himself and re- 
gained his character of philosophical observer. In 
this character he remained in the car and let it car- 
ry him by the corner where he ought to have got 
out and gone home, and let it keep on with him to 


see ee 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


one of the furthermost tracks westward, where so 
much of the fighting was reported to have taken 
place. But everything on the way was as quiet as 
on the east side. 


143 


Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of 
the brake that he was half thrown from his seat, 
and the policeman jumped down from the platform 
and ran forward. 


LY. 


~ Dryroos sat at breakfast that morning with Mrs. 
Mandel as usual to pour out his coffee. Conrad 
had already gone down-town; the two girls lay abed 
much later than their father breaktasted, and their 
mother had gradually grown too feeble to come 
own till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at 
he door. Her face was white to the edges of her 
lips, and her eyes were blazing. 

“Look here, father! Have you been saying any* 


_- thing to Mr. Beaton ?” 


The old man looked up at her across his coffee- 
cup through his frowning brows. ‘ No.” 

Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon 
shook in her hand.. 

“Then what’s the reason he don’t come here any 
more?” demanded the girl; and her glance darted 
from her father to Mrs. Mandel. “Oh, it’s you, is 
it? Id like to know who told you to meddle in 
other people’s business ?” 

“7 did,” said Dryfoos, savagely. ‘J told her to 

ask him what he wanted here, and he said he didn’t 

Want anything, and he’s stopped coming. That’s 
all. I did it myself.” 

_ “Oh, you did, did you?” said the girl, scarcely 
less insolently than she had spoken to Mrs. Mandel. 
“T should like to know what you did it for? Id 
like to know what made you think I wasn’t able 

. to take care of myself. I just knew somebody had 
been meddling, but I didn’t suppose it was you, I 
can manage my own affairs in my own way, if you 
please, and I'll thank you after this to leave me to 
myself in what don’t concern you.” 

“Don’t concern me? You impudent jade!” her 
father began. 

Christine advanced from the doorway toward the 
table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed 
trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from 
‘them. She said, “ Will you go to him and tell him 
that this meddlesome minx here had no business to 
Say anything about me to him, and you take it all 
back ?” 

“No!” shouted the old man. ‘ And if—” 

~“That’s all I want of you /” the girl shouted in 
her turn. ‘Here are your presents.” With both 

_ hands she flung the jewels—pins and rings and ear- 
rings and bracelets—among the breakfast dishes, 
from which some of them sprang to the floor. She 
stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring from the 
finger where Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed 
that at her father’s plate. Then she whirled out 
of the room, and they heard her running upstairs. 


The old man made a start toward her, but he fell 
back in his chair before she was gone, and with a 
fierce, grinding movement of his jaws, controlled 
himself. “ Take—take those things up,’ he gasped 
to Mrs. Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again 
from his chair, but when she asked him if he were 
unwell, he said no, with an air of offence, and got 
quickly to his feet. He mechanically picked up the 
intaglio ring from the table while he stood there, and 
put it on his little finger; his hand was not much 
bigger than Christine’s. ‘‘ How do you suppose she 
found it out ?” he asked, after a moment. 

“She seems to have merely suspected it,” said 
Mrs. Mandel, in a tremor, and with the fright in her 
eyes which Christine’s violence had brought there. 

‘‘ Well, it don’t make any difference. She had to 
know, somehow, and now she knows.” He started 
toward the door of the library, as if to go into the 
hall, where his hat and coat always hung. 

“Mr. Dryfoos,” palpitated Mrs. Mandel, “TI can’t 
remain here, after the language your daughter ‘has 
used to me—I can’t let you leave me—I—I’m afraid 
of her—” 

“Lock yourself up, then,” said the old man, 
rudely. He added, from the hall before he went 
out, “I reckon she’ll quiet down now.” 

He took the elevated road. The strike seemed 
a very far-off thing, though the paper he bought to 
look up the stock market was full of noisy typog- 
raphy about yesterday’s troubles on the surface 
lines. Among the millionaires in Wall Street there 
was some joking and some swearing, but not much 
thinking about the six thousand men who had taken 
such chances in their attempt to better their con- 
dition. Dryfoos heard nothing of the strike in the 
lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two 
or three hours watching a favorite stock of his go. 
up and go down under the betting. By the time 
the Exchange closed it had risen eight points, and 
on this and some other investments he was five 
thousand dollars richer than he had been in the. 
morning. But he had expected to be richer still, 
and he was by no means satisfied with his luck. 
All through the excitement of his winning and 
losing had played the dull, murderous rage he felt 
toward the child who had defied him, and when the 
game was over and he started home, his rage mount- 
ed into a sort of frenzy; he would teach her, he 
would break her. He walked a long way without 
thinking, and then waited for a car. None came,’ 
and he hailed a passing coupé. 


144 


What has got all the cars ?” he demanded of the 
driver, who jumped down from his box to open 
the door for him and get his direction. 

“Been away ?”? asked the driver. ‘“ Hasn’t been 
any car along for a week. Strike.” 

“Oh yes,” said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, 
and he remained staring at the driver after he had 
taken his seat. 

The man asked, ‘“‘ Where to ?” 

Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, 
and he said, with uncontrollable fury: “I told you 
once! Go up to West Eleventh, and drive along 
‘slow on the south side; I'll show you the place.” 

He could not remember the number of Hvery 
Other Week office, where he suddenly decided to 
‘stop before he went home. He wished to see Ful- 
‘kerson, and ask him something about Beaton: 
whether he had been about lately, and whether he 
had dropped any hint of what had happened con- 
cerning Christine; Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson 
was in the fellow’s confidence. 

There was nobody but Conrad in the counting- 
room, whither Dryfoos returned after glancing into 
Fulkerson’s empty office. ‘ Where’s Fulkerson 2” 
he asked, sitting down with his hat on. 

“He went out a few moments ago,” said Conrad, 
glancing at the clock. “I’m afraid he isn’t coming 
back again to-day, if you wanted to see him.” 

Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to 
indicate March’s room. “That other fellow out, 
too?” 

“He went, just before Mr. Fulkerson,” answered 
Conrad. 

‘““Do you generally knock off here in the middle 
of the afternoon ?” asked the old man. 

“No,” said Conrad, as patiently as if his fa- 
‘ther had not been there a score of times, and found 
ithe whole staff of Avery Other Week at work be- 
tween four and five. ‘Mr. March, you know, takes 
-a good deal of his work home with him, and I 
suppose Mr. Fulkerson went out so early because 
there isn’t much doing to-day. Perhaps it’s the 
strike that makes it dull.” 

“The strike—yes! It’s a pretty piece of business 
to have everything thrown out because a parcel of 
lazy hounds want a chance to lay off and get drunk.” 
Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some 
-answer to this, but the young man’s mild face mere- 
ly saddened, and he said nothing. “I’ve got a 
coupé out there now that I had to take because I 
-couldn’t get a car. If I had my way I’d have a 
lot of those.vagabonds hung. They’re waiting to 
get the city into a snarl, and then rob the houses— 
pack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to call 
‘out the militia, and fire into ’em. Clubbing is too 
good for them.” Conrad was still silent, and his 
father sneered, “ But I reckon you don’t think go.” 

“T think the strike is useless,” said Conrad. 

“Oh, you do, do you? Comin’ to your senses a 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


little. Gettin’ tired walkin’ so much. I should like 
to know what your gentlemen over there on the east 
side think about the strike, anyway.” 
The young fellow dropped his eyes. 
authorized to speak for them.” : 
“Oh, indeed! And perhaps you’re not authorized 
to speak for yourself ?” 


“T am not 


“Father, you know we don’t agree about these 


things. I’d rather not talk—” 

“But ?m goin’ to make you talk this time!” cried 
Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat in 
with the side of his fist. A maddening thought of 
Christine came over him. “ As long as you eat my 
bread, you have got to do as I say. I won’t have 
my children telling me what I shall do and sha’n’t 
do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, 
you just speak up! Do you think those loafers are 
right, or don’t you? Come!” 

Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. 
think they were very foolish to strike—at this time, 
when the elevated roads can do the work.” 

“Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they 
think over there on the east side that it ’d been wise 
to strike before we got the elevated ?” Conrad again 
refused to answer, and his father roared, ‘‘ What do 
you think ?” 

“T think a strike is always bad business. It’s 
war; but sometimes there don’t seem any other way 
for the working-men to get justice. They say that 
sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while.” 

“Those lazy devils were paid enough already,” 
shrieked the old man. “They got two dollars a 
day. How much do you think they ought to ’a’ 
got? Twenty ?” 

Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his 
father. But he decided to answer. 
that with partial work, and fines, and other things, 


they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety 


cents a day.” 

“They lie, and you know they lie,” said his father, 
rising and coming toward him. ‘And what do you 
think the upshot of it all will be, after they’ve ruined 
business for another week, and made people hire 
hacks, and stolen the money of honest men? How 
is it going to end ?” 

“They will have to give in.” 


“Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, 


I should like to know ? 
it then? Speak!” 

“T shall feel as I do now. I know you don’t 
think that way, and I don’t blame you—or anybody. 
But if I have got‘to say how I shall feel, why, I shall 
feel sorry they didn’t succeed, for I believe they 
have a righteous cause, though they go the wrong 
way to help themselves.” 

His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his 
teeth set. “Do you dare to say that to me?” 

“Yes. Ican’t help it. I pity them; my whole 
heart is with those poor men.” 


How will you feel about 


“The men say . 


Te 


Pa is f 
/ ee ARCS 


Ms 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 
ah fi 
“You impudent puppy!” shouted the old man. and the blood slowly trickling from the wound in 


He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face. 

Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and while 

_ the blood began to trickle from a wound that Chris- 

tine’s intaglio ring had made in his temple, he look- 

ed at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, 
“* Father !” 

The old man wrenched his fist away, and ran out 

“of the house. He remembered his address now, 

and he gave it as he plunged into the coupé. He 

trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of 

_ the windows at the passers as he drove home; he 

‘only saw Conrad’s mild, grieving, wondering eyes, 


ConraD looked confusedly around, and the same 
voice said again, ‘Mr. Dryfoos!” and he saw that 
“it was a lady speaking to him from a coupé be- 
side the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss 
Vance. 
_ She smiled when he gave signs of having discov- 
ered her, and came up to the door of her carriage. 
“JT am. so glad to meet you. I have been longing 
to talk to somebody ; nobody seems to feel about it 
asIdo. Oh,isn’t it horrible? Must they fail? I 
Saw cars running on all the lines as I came across; 
it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows 
give in? And everybody seems to hate them so— 
I can’t bear it.” Her face was estranged with ex- 
_ eitement, and there were traces of tears on it. “ You 
~ must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street 
‘this way; but when I caught sight of you I had to 
- speak. I knew you would sympathize—I knew you 

would feel asI do. Oh, how can anybody help hon- 

_ oring those poor men for standing by one another 

_ asthey do? They are risking all they have in the 
world for the sake of justice! Oh, they are true 
heroes! They are staking the bread of their wives 
4 and children on the dreadful chance they’ve taken! 
_ But no one seems to understand it. No one seems 
‘to see that they are willing to suffer more now that 
other poor men may suffer less hereafter. And 
__ ithose wretched creatures that are coming in to take 
their places—those traitors.” 
_ “We can’t blame them for wanting to earn a 
_ living, Miss Vance,” said Conrad. 
“No, no! I don’t blame them. Who am I, to do 
_suchathing? It’s we—people like me, of my class 
__ —who make the poor betray one another. But this 
dreadful fighting—this hideous paper is full of it!” 
She held up an extra, crumpled with her nervous 
3 reading. ‘Can’t sonietnine be done to stop it? 
_ Don’t you think that if some one went among them, 
and tried to make them see how perfectly hopeless 
_ iit was to resist the companies, and drive off the 
new men, he might do some good? I have wanted 


10 


his temple. 

Conrad went to the neat set-bowl in Fulkergon’s 8 
comfortable room, anil washed the blood away, and 
kept bathing the wound with the cold water till it 
stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he 
thought he would not put anything on it. After a 
while he locked up the office, and started out, he 
hardly knew where. But he walked on, in the di- 
rection he had taken, till he found himself in Union 
Square, on the pavement in front of Brentano’s, It 
seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently 
to him, “ Mr. Dryfoos !” 


to go and try it; but I am a woman, and I mustn’t! 
I shouldn’t be afraid of the strikers, but I’m afraid 
of what people would say!” Conrad kept pressing 
his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he 
thought might be bleeding, and now she noticed 
this. ‘Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look so 
pale.” 

‘No, it’s nothing—a little scratch I’ve got.” 

“Indeed you look pale. Have you a carriage? 
How will you get home? Will you get in here with 
me, and let me drive you ?” 

“‘No, no,” said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. 
“Tm perfectly well—” 

‘* And you don’t think I’m foolish and wicked for 
stopping you here, and talking in this way? But I 
know you feel as I do!” 

“Yes, I feel as you do. You are right—right in 
every way. I mustn’t keep you. Good-by.” He 
stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful hand 
out of the window, and when he took it she wrung 
his hand hard. 

“Thank you, thank you! You are good, and you 
are just! But no one can do anything. It’s use- 
less!” . 

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box, 
whose respectability had suffered through the strange 
behavior of his mistress in this interview, drove 
quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a mo- 
ment looking after the carriage. His heart was 
full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would burst. 
As he turned to walk away it seemed to him as if 
he mounted upon the air. The trust she had shown 
him, the praise she had given him; that crush of 
the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea 
from it, but it all filled him with love that cast out 
the pain and shame he had been suffering. He be- 
lieved that he could never be unhappy any more; 
the hardness that was in his mind toward his father 
went out of it; he saw how sorely he had tried 
him; he grieved that he had done it; but the means, 
the difference of his feeling about the cause of 


i sus 


146 A Hazard of 


their quarrel, he was solemnly glad of that since 
she shared it. He was only sorry for his father. 
“Poor father!” he said under his breath as he went 
along. He explained to her about his father in his 
reverie, and she pitied his father too. 

He was walking over toward the west side, aim- 
lessly at first, and then at times with the longing 
to do something to save those mistaken men from 
themselves, forming itself into a purpose. Was not 
that what she meant, when she bewailed her wo- 
man’s helplessness? She must have wished him to 
try if he, being a man, could not do something; or 
if she did not, still he would try; and if she heard 
of it, she would recall what she had said, and would 
be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of 
her pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot 
almost what it was; but when he came to a Street- 
car track he remembered it, and looked up and 
down to see if there were any turbulent gathering 
of men, whom he might mingle with and help to 
keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and 
then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his 
exalted mood al! events had a dream-like simulta- 
neity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in 
the middle of it, a little way off, was a street car, 
and around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, 
struggling men. The driver was lashing his horses 
forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with 
the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brick- 
bats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying 
to move them. The mob closed upon them in a 
body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled up from the 
other side, and a squad of policemen leaped out, 
and began to club the rioters. Conrad could see 
how they struck them under the rims of their hats ; 
the blows on their skulls sounded as if they had 
fallen on stone; the rioters ran in all directions. 


Vi 


In the cares which Mrs. March shared with her 
husband that night she was supported partly by 
principle, but mainly by the potent excitement which 
bewildered Conrad’s family and took all reality from 
what had happened. It was nearly midnight when 
the Marches left them and walked away toward the 
elevated station with Fulkerson. Everything had 
been done, by that time, that could be done; and 
Fulkerson was not without that satisfaction in the 
business-like despatch of all the details, which at- 
tends each step in such an affair, and helps to make 
death tolerable even to the most sorely stricken. 
We are creatures of the moment; we live from one 
little space to another; and only one interest at a 
time fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful when they 
got into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. March 
experienced a rebound from her depression which 


New Fortunes. 


One of the officers rushed up toward the corner 
where Conrad stood, and then he saw at his side 
a tall old man with a long white beard. He was 
calling out at the policeman: “Ah yes! Glup the 
strikerss—gif it to them! Why don’t you co and 
glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick 
your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors? Glup the: 
strikerss—they cot no friendts! They cot no money 
to pribe you, to dreat you!” 

The officer whirled his club, and the old man 
threw his left arm up to shield his head. Conrad 
recognized Lindau, and now he saw the empty sleeve 
dangle in the air, over the stump of his wrist. He 
heard a shot in that turmoil beside the car, and 
something seemed to strike him in the breast. He 
was going to say to the policeman, “ Don’t strike 
him! He’s an old soldier! You see he has no 
hand!” but he could not speak, he could not move 
his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his 
face: it was not bad, not cruel; it was like the face 
of a statue, fixed, perdurable; a mere image of irre- 
sponsible and involuntary authority. Then Conrad 
fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot 
fired from the car. 

March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his- 
car, and at the same moment he saw Lindau drop 
under the club of the policeman, who left him where 
he fell, and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing 
the rioters. The fighting round the car in the avenue: 
ceased; the driver whipped his horses into a gallop, 
and the place was left empty. 

March would have liked to run; he thought how 


his wife had implored him to keep away from the — 


rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lying 
there if he would. Something stronger than his 
will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad 
dead beside the old man. 


she felt that she ought not to have experienced. 
But she condoned the offence a little in herself, 
because her husband remained so constant in his 
gravity; and pending the final accounting he must 
make her for having beer where he could be of so 
much use from the first instant of the calamity, she 
was tenderly, gratefully proud of all the use he had 
been to Conrad’s family, and especially his miser- 
able old father. To her mind March was the princi- 
pal actor in the whole affair, and much more impor: 
tant in having seen it than those who had suffered 
in it. In fact, he had suffered incomparably. 

“Well, well,” said Fulkerson. ‘They’ll get along 
now. We’ve doné all we could, and there’s nothing 
left but for them to bear it. Of course it’s awful, 
but I guess it ll come out all right. I mean,” he 
added, ‘‘ they'll pull through now.” 


ad 


we 
& 


ee ee 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“T suppose,” said March, ‘“‘that nothing is put on 
us that we can’t bear. But I should think,” he 
went on, musingly, ‘‘that when God sees what we 
poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round with 
this eternal darkness of death, He must respect us.”’ 

“Basil!” said his wife. But in her heart she 
drew nearer to him for the words she thought she 
ought to rebuke him for. : 

“Oh, I know,” he said, ‘‘ we school ourselves to 
despise human nature. But God did not make us 
despicable, and I say whatever end He meant us 

for, He must have some such thrill of joy in our 
adequacy to fate as a father feels when his son 
shows himself a man. When I think what we can 
be if we must, I can’t believe the least of us shall 
finally perish.” . 

“Oh, I reckon the Almighty won’t scoop any of 
us,” said Fulkerson, with a piety of his own. 

“That poor boy’s father!” sighed Mrs, March. 

“J can’t get his face out of my sight. He looked 
so much worse than death.” 

“Oh, death doesn’t look bad,” said March. ‘It’s 
life that looks so in its presence. Death is peace 
and pardon. I only wish poor old Lindau was as 

_ well out of it as Conrad, there.” 

“Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough,” said 
Mrs. March. ‘I hope he will be careful after this.” 

March did not try to defend Lindau against her 
theory of the case, which inexorably held him re- 

sponsible for Conrad’s death. 

“Lindau’s going to come out all right, I guess,” 

_ said Fulkerson. ‘He was first-rate when I saw him 
at the hospital to-night.” He whispered in March’s 
ear, at a chance he got in mounting the station 
Stairs: “I didn’t like to tell you there at the house, 
but I guess you’d better know. They had to take 
 Lindauw’s arm off near the shoulder. Smashed all 
to pieces by the clubbing.” 
In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for 
them, the bereaved family whom the Marches had 
just left lingered together, and tried to get strength 
_ to part for the night. They were all spent with 
the fatigue that comes from heaven to such misery 
as theirs, and they sat in a torpor in which each 
_ waited for the other to move, to speak. 

Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose 
and went out of the room without saying a word, 
and they heard her going upstairs. Then Mela said, 
“T reckon the rest of us better be goun’ too, father. 
Here, let’s git mother started.” 

She put her arm round her mother, to lift her 
from her chair, but the old man did not stir, and 
Mela called Mrs. Mandel from the next room. Be- 
tween them they raised her to her feet. 

“ Ain’t there anybody a-goin’ to set up with it ?” 
she asked, in her hoarse pipe. “It appears like 
folks hain’t got any feelin’s in New York. Woon’t 
some 0’ the neighbors come and offer to set up, 

_ without waitin’ to be asked ?” 


147 


“Oh, that’s all right, mother. The men’ll attend 
to that. Don’t you bother any,” Mela coaxed, and 
she kept her arm round her mother, with tender 
patience. 

“Why, Mely, child! I can’t feel right to have it 
left to hirelin’s, so. But there ain’t anybody any 
more to see things done as they ought. If Coonrod 
was on’y here—” 

“Well, mother, you are pretty mixed!” said Mela, 
with a strong tendency to break into her large 
guffaw. But she checked herself and said, “‘ I know 
just how you feel, though. It keeps a-comun’ and 
a-goun’; and it’s so and it ain’t so, all at once; 
that’s the plague of it. Well, father! Ain’t you 
goun’ to come ?” 

“Tm goin’ to stay, Mela,” said the old man, gen- 
tly, without moving. “Get your mother to bed, 
that’s a good girl.” 

“You goin’ to set up with him, Jacob 2?” asked 
the old woman. 

“Yes, Lizbeth, Tll set up. You go to bed.” 

‘Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it ’l]1 do you 
good to set up. I wished I could set up with you; 
but I don’t seem to have the stren’th I did when 
the twins died. I must git my sleep, so’s to— I 
don’t like very well to have you broke of your rest, 
Jacob, but there don’t appear to be anybody else. 
You wouldn’t have to do it if Coonrod was here. 
There I go ag’in! Mercy! mercy!” 

‘Well, do come along, then, mother,” said Mela; 
and she got her out of the room, with’ Mrs. Mandel’s 
help, and up the stairs. 

From the top the old woman called down: “You 
tell Coonrod—” She stopped, and he heard her 
groan out, “‘ My Lord! my Lord!” 

He sat, one silence in the dining-room, where they 
had all lingered together, and in the library beyond 
the hireling watcher sat, another silence. The time 
passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the 
house ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, 
and the vague, remote rumor. of the city invaded 
the inner stillness. It grew louder toward morn- 
ing, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher’s 
deeper breathing that he had fallen into a doze. 

He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his 
son was; the place was full of the awful sweetness 
of the flowers that Fulkerson had brought, and that 
lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned 
up a burner in the chandelier, and stood looking on 
the majestic serenity of the dead face. 

He could not move when he saw his wife coming 
down the stairway in the hall. She was in her long 
white flannel bed-gown, and the candle she carried 
shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she 
might be walking in her sleep, but she said, quite 
simply, “I woke up, and I couldn’t git to sleep ag’in 
without comin’ to have a look.’’ She stood beside 
their dead son with him. “ Well, he’s beautiful, 
Jacob. He was the prettiest baby! And he was al- 


148 


ways good, Coonrod was; Ill say that for him. 
I don’t believe he ever give me a minute’s care 
in his whole life. I reckon I liked him about the 
best of all the childern; but I don’t know as I ever 
done much to show it. But you was always good 
to him, Jacob; you always done the best for him, 
ever since he was a little feller. I used to be afraid 
you'd spoil him sometimes in them days ; but I 
guess you’re glad now for every time you didn’t 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


cross him. I don’t suppose since the twins died 
you ever hit him a lick.” She stooped and peered 
closer at the face. ‘‘ Why, Jacob, what’s that there 
by his pore eye ?” 

Dryfoos saw it too, the wound that he had feared 
to look for, and that now seemed to redden on his 
sight. He broke into a low, wavering cry, like a 
child’s in despair, like an animal’s in terror, like a 


soul’s in the anguish of remorse. 


VI. 


Tue evening after the funeral, while the Marches 
sat together talking it over, and making approach- 
es, through its shadow, to the question of their own 
future, which it involved, they were startled by the 
twitter of the electric bell at their apartment door. 
It was really not so late as the children’s having 
gone to bed made it seem; but at nine o’clock it 
was too late for any probable visitor except Fulker- 
son. It might be he, and March was glad to post- 
pone the impending question to his curiosity concern- 
ing the immediate business Fulkerson might have 
with him. He went himself to the door, and con- 
fronted there a lady deeply veiled in black, and at- 
tended by a very decorous serving-woman. 

“Are you alone, Mr. March—you and Mrs. 
March 2”? asked the lady, behind her veil; and as 
he hesitated, she said, ‘‘ You don’t know me! Miss 
Vance ;” and she threw back her veil, showing her 
face wan and agitated in the dark folds. “Iam very 
anxious to see you—to speak with you both. May 
I come in?” 

“Why, certainly, Miss Vance,” he answered, still 
too much stupefied by her presence to realize it. 

She promptly entered, and saying, with a glance 
at the hall chair by the door, ‘“‘My maid can sit 
here?” followed him to the room where he had 
left his wife. 

Mrs. March showed herself more capable of 
coping with the fact. She welcomed Miss Vance 
with the liking they both felt for the girl, and with 
the sympathy which her troubled face inspired. 

“T won’t tire you with excuses for coming, Mrs. 
March,” she said, “for it was the only thing left for 
me to do; and I come at my aunt’s suggestion.” 
She added this as if it would help to account for 
her more on the conventional plane, and she had 
the instinctive good taste to address herself through- 
out to Mrs. March as much as possible, though what 
she had to say was mainly for March. “I don’t 
know how to begin—I don’t know how to speak of 
this terrible affair. But you know what I mean. I 
feel as if I had lived a whole lifetime since it— 
happened. I don’t want you to pity me for it,” she 
said, forestalling a politeness from Mrs. March. 
“T’m the last one to be thought of, and you mustn’t 


mind me if I try to make you. I came to find 
out all of the truth that I can, and when I know 
just what that is I shall know what to do. I have 
read the inquest; it’s all burnt into my brain. But 
I don’t care for that—for myself: you must let me 
say such things without minding me. I know that 
your husband—that Mr. March was there; I read 
his testimony; and I wished to ask him—to ask 
him—” She stopped and looked distractedly about. 
“But what folly! He must have said everything 
he knew—he had to.” Her eyes wandered to him 
from his wife, on whom she had kept them with in- 
stinctive tact. 

“T said everything—yes,” he replied. “ But if 
you would like to know—” 

“Perhaps I had better tell you something first. 
I had just parted with him—it couldn’t have been 
more than half an hour—in front of Brentano’s; 
he must have gone straight to his death. We were 
talking, and I—I said, Why didn’t some one go 
among the strikers and plead with them to be peace- 
able, and keep them from attacking the new men ? 
I knew that he felt as I did about the strikers; 
that he was their friend. Did you see—do you 
know anything that makes you think he had been 
trying to do that?” 

‘“‘T am sorry,” March began, ‘‘I didn’t see him at 
all till—till I saw him lying dead.” 

““My husband was there purely by accident,” Mrs, 
March put in. “I had begged and entreated him 
not to go near the striking, anywhere. And he had 
just got out of the car, and saw the policeman strike 
that wretched Lindau—he’s been such an anxiety 
to me ever since we have had anything to do with 
him here; my husband knew him when he was a 
boy in the West. Mr. March came home from it 
all perfectly prostrated; it made us all sick! No- 
thing so horrible ever came into our lives before. 
I assure you it was the most shocking experi- 
ence.” 

Miss Vance listened to her with that look of 
patience which those who have seen much of the 
real suffering of the world—the daily portion of 
the poor—have for the nervous woes of comfort- 
able people. March hung his head; he knew it 


_ hospital—” ‘ 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


would be useless to protest that his share of the 


calamity was, by comparison, infinitesimally small. 
After she had heard Mrs, March to the end even 


of her repetitions, Miss Vance said, as if it were a 


mere matter of course that she should have looked 
the affair up, ‘‘ Yes, I have seen Mr. Lindau at the 


“My husband goes every day to“see him,” Mrs. 


~ March interrupted, to give a final touch to the con- 


- ception of March’s magnanimity throughout. 


“The poor man seems to have been in the wrong 
at the time,” said Miss Vance. 
“IT could almost say he had earned the right to 


_ be wrong. He’s a man of the most generous in- 


his wife’s different opinion of Lindau. 


_ if I were a man. 


_stincts, and a high ideal of justice, of equity—too 


high to be considered by a policeman with a club 
in his hand,” said March, with a bold defiance of 
“Tt?s the 
policeman’s business, I suppose, to club the ideal 
when he finds it inciting a riot.” 

“Oh, I don’t blame Mr. Lindau; I don’t blame the 


policeman; he was as much a mere instrument as 
his club was. 
much I am to blame myself. 


I am only trying to find out how 
I had no thought of 
Mr. Dryfoos’s going there—of his attempting to talk 


: _ with the strikers and keep them quiet; I was only 


thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do 
But perhaps he understood me 
to ask him to go—perhaps my words sent him to 


his death.” 


~e een: 


ee 


any wish to flatter her out of it. 


She had a sort of calm in her courage to know 
the worst truth as to her responsibility that forbade 
“Tm afraid,” 
said March, “that is what can never be known now.” 


After a moment he added, “But why should you 
wish to know? 


If he went there as a peace-maker, 
he died in a good cause, in such a way as he would 
wish to die, I believe.” 

“Yes,” said the girl; “I have thought of that. 
But death is awful; we must not think patiently, 
forgivingly, of sending any one to their death in the 


best cause.” 


“T fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad Dry- 
fous,” March replied. ‘He was thwarted and dis- 


_ appointed, without even pleasing the ambition that 


thwarted and disappointed him. That poor old man, 
his father, warped him from his simple, life-long 
wish to be a minister, and was trying to make a 
business man of him. [If it will be any consolation 


_to you to know it, Miss Vance, I can assure you that 


he was very unhappy, and I don’t see how he could 
ever have been happy here.” 

“Tt won’t,” said the girl, steadily. ‘If people 
are born into this world, it’s because they were 
meant to live in it. It isn’t a question of being hap- 
py here; no one is happy, in that old selfish way, or 
can be; but he could have been of great use.” 

‘Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? 
He may have been trying to silence Lindau.” 


149 


“Oh, Lindau wasn’t worth it!’ cried Mrs. March. 

Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite 
understand. . Then she turned to March. ‘“ He might 
have been unhappy, as we all are; but I know that 
his life here would have had a higher happiness 
than we wish for or aim for.” The tears began to 
run silently down her cheeks. ‘‘ He looked strange- 
ly happy that day when he left me. He had hurt 
himself somehow, and his face was bleeding from 
a scratch; he kept his handkerchief up; he was 
pale, but such a light came into his face when we 
shook hands—ah, I know he went to try and do 
what I said!” They were all silent, while she dried 
her eyes and then put her handkerchief back into 
the pocket from which she had suddenly pulled it, 
with a series of vivid, young-ladyish gestures, which 
struck March by their incongruity with the occasion 
of their talk, and yet by their harmony with the 
rest of her elegance. ‘I am sorry, Miss Vance,” 
he began, “that I can’t really tell you anything 
more—” 

‘You are very kind,” she said, controlling her- 
self and rising quickly. “I thank you—thank you 
both very much.’ She turned to Mrs. March and 
shook hands with her and then with him. “I might 
have known—I did know that there wasn’t any- 
thing more for you to tell. But at least ’ve found 
out from you that there was nothing, and now I 
can begin to bear what I must. How are those 
poor creatures—his mother and father, his sisters ? 
Some day, I hope, I shall be ashamed to have post- 
poned them to the thought of myself; but I can’t 
pretend to be yet. I could not come to the funeral ; 
I wanted to.” 

She addressed her question to Mrs. March, who 
answered: “I can understand. But they were 
pleased with the flowers you sent; people are, at 
such times, and they haven’t many friends.” 

“Would you go to see them?” asked the girl. 
‘Would you tell them what I’ve told you?” 

Mrs. March looked at her husband. 

“T don’t see what good it would do. They 
wouldn’t understand. But if it would relieve 
you—” 

“PI wait till it isn’t a question of self-relief,” 
said the girl. ‘‘ Good-by!” 

She left them to long debate of the event. At 
the end Mrs. March said, “She is a strange be- 
ing; such a mixture of the society girl and the 
saint.” 

Her husband answered: “She’s the potentiality 
of several kinds of fanatic. She’s very unhappy, 
and I don’t see how she’s to be happier about that 
poor fellow. I shouldn’t be surprised if she did in- 
spire him to attempt something of that kind.” 

“Well, you got out of it very well, Basil. I ad- 
mired the way you managed. I was afraid you’d 
say something awkward.” 

“Qh, with a plain line of truth before me, as the 


150 


only possible thing, I can get on pretty well. When 
it comes to anything decorative, I’d rather leave it 
to you, Isabel.” 

She seemed insensible of his jest. ‘Of course he 
was in love with her. Zhat was the light that 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


: 


came into his face when he was going to do what | 


he thought she wanted him to do,” 
“« And she—do you think that she was—” 
“What an idea! It would have been perfectly 
grotesque!” 


Went. 


THER affliction brought the Dryfooses into hu- 
mauner relations with the Marches, who had hitherto 
regarded them as a necessary evil, as the odious 
means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March found 
that the women of the family seemed glad of her 
coming, and in the sense of her usefulness to them 
all, she began to feel a kindness even for Christine. 
But she could not help seeing that between the girl 
and her father there was an unsettled account, some- 
how, and that it was Christine and not the old man 
who was holding out. She thought that their sor- 
row had tended to refine the others. Mela was 
much more subdued, and except when she aban- 
doned herself to a childish interest in her mourning, 
she did nothing to shock Mrs. March’s taste, or to 
seem unworthy of her grief. She was very good to 
her mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and 
to her father, whom it had apparently fallen upon 
with crushing weight. Once, after visiting their 
house, she described to her husband a little scene 
between Dryfoos and Mela, when he came home from 
Wall Street and the girl met him at the door with 
a kind of country simpleness, and took his hat and 
stick, and brought him into the room where Mrs. 
March sat, looking tired and broken. 

She found this look of Dryfoos’s pathetic, and 
dwelt on the sort of stupefaction there was in it; 
he must have loved his son more than they ever 
realized. “Yes,” said March, “I suspect he did. 
He’s never been about the place since that day; he 
was always dropping in, before, on his way uptown. 
He seems to go down to Wall Street every day, just 
as before, but I suppose that’s mechanical; he 
wouldn’t know what else to do; I dare say it’s best 
for him. The sanguine Fulkerson is getting a lit- 
tle anxious about the future of very Other Week. 
Now Conrad’s gone, he isn’t sure the old man will 
want to keep on with it, or whether he’ll have to look 
up another Angel. He wants to get married, I im- 
agine, and he can’t venture till this point is settled.” 

“Ts a very material point to ws, too, Basil,” said 
Mrs. March. 

“Well, of course. I hadn’t overlooked that, you 
may be sure. One of the things that Fulkerson 
and I have discussed is a scheme for buying the 
magazine. Its success is pretty well assured now, 
and I shouldn’t be afraid to put money into it—if I 
had the money.” 

“T couldn’t let you sell the house in Boston, 
Basil !” 


“ And I don’t want to. I wish we could go back 
and live in it, and get the rent too! It would be 
quite a support. But I suppose if Dryfoos won’t 
keep on, it must come to another Angel. I hope it 
won’t be a literary one, with a fancy for running my 
department.” 

“Oh, I guess whoever takes the magazine will be 
glad enough to keep you!” 

“To you think so? Well, perhaps. But I don’t 
believe Fulkerson would let me stand long between 
him and an Angel of the right description.” 

“Well, then, I believe he would. And you’ve 
never seen anything, Basil, to make you really think 
that Mr. Fulkerson didn’t appreciate you to the 
utmost.”’ 

“J think I came pretty near an undervaluation in 
that Lindau trouble. I shall always wonder what 
put a backbone into Fulkerson, just at that crisis. 
Fulkerson doesn’t strike me as the stuff of a moral 
hero.” 

‘“‘ At any rate, he was one,” said Mrs. March, “and 
that’s quite enough for me.” 

March did not answer. ‘‘ What a noble thing 
life is, anyway! Here I am, well on the way to 
fifty, after twenty-five years of hard work, looking 
forward to the potential poorhouse as confidently 
as I did in youth, We might have saved a little 
more than we have saved; but the little more 
wouldn’t avail if I were turned out of my place now; 
and we should have lived sordidly to no purpose. 
Some one always has you by the throat, unless you 
have some one else in your grip. I wonder if that’s 
the attitude the Almighty intended his respectable 
creatures to take toward one another! I wonder if 
He meant our civilization, the battle we fight in, 
the game we trick in! I wonder if He considers it 
final, and if the kingdom of heaven on earth, which 
we pray for—” 

“Have you seen Lindau to-day?” Mrs. March 
asked. 

“ You inferred it from the quality of my piety ?” 
March laughed, and then suddenly sobered. ‘ Yes, 
I saw him. It’s going rather hard with him, I’m 
afraid. The amputation doesn’t heal very well; the 


shock was very great, and he’s old. It'll take time. — 


There’s so much pain that they have to keep him 
under opiates, and I don’t think he fully knew me. 
At any rate, I didn’t get my piety from him to-day.” 

“It’s horrible! Horrible!” said Mrs. March. “I 


can’t get over it! After losing his hand in the war, — 


PT Nu gh AOE 
ble ore 


. 


to him, except through natural causes. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


to lose his whole arm now, in this way! It does 
seem too cruel! Of course he oughtn’t to have 
been there; we can say that. But you oughtn’t to 
have been there either, Basil.” 

“Well, I wasn’t exactly advising the police to go 
and club the railroad presidents.” 

“Neither was poor Conrad Dryfoos.” 

“YT don’t deny it. All that was distinctly the 


chance of life and death. That belonged to God; 


and no doubt it was law, though it seems chance. 
But what I object to is this economic chance-world 
in which we live, and which we men seem to have 
created. It ought to be law as inflexible in human 
affairs as the order of day and night in the physical 
world, that if a man will work he shall both rest 
and eat, and shall not be harassed with any question 
as to how his repose and his provision shall come. 
Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the reason, 
But in our state of things no one is secure of this. 
No one is sure of finding work; no one is sure of 
not losing it. I may have my work taken away 
from me at any moment by the caprice, the mood, 


the indigestion of a man who has not the qualifica- 
tion for knowing whether I do it well or ill. 


At my 
time of life—at every time of life—a man ought 
to feel that if he will keep on doing his duty he 
shall not suffer in himself or in those who are dear 
But no man 
can feel this as things are now; and so we go on, 


_ pushing and pulling, climbing and crawling, thrust- 


ing aside and trampling underfoot; lying, cheating, 
stealing; and when we get to the end, covered with 


‘blood and dirt and sin and shame, and look back 


‘over the way we’ve come to a palace of our own, 


vor the poorhouse, which is about the only possession 


we can claim in common with our brother-men, I 
‘don’t think the retrospect can be pleasing.” 

“T know, I know!” said his wife. ‘I think of 
those things too, Basil. Life isn’t what it seems 
when you look forward to it. But I think people 
would suffer less, and wouldn’t have to work so hard, 


_ and could make all reasonable provision for the fu- 


ture, if they were not so greedy and so foolish.” 
“Oh, without doubt! We can’t put it all on the 
conditions; we must put some of the blame on 
character. But conditions make character; and 
people are greedy and foolish, and wish to have and 
to shine, because having and shining are held up 
to them by civilization as the chief good of life. 
We all know they are not the chief good, perhaps not 
‘good at all; but if some one ventures to say so, all 
the rest of us call him a fraud and a crank, and go 
moiling and toiling on to the palace or the poor- 
house. We can’t helpit. If one were less greedy, 
or less foolish, some one else would have, and 
would shine at his expense. We don’t moil and toil 
to ourselves alone; the palace or the poorhouse is 
not merely for ourselves, but for our children, whom 


 -we’ve brought up in the superstition that having 


151 


and shining is the chief good. We dare not teach 
them otherwise, for fear they may falter in the 
fight, when it comes their turn; and the children of 
others will crowd them out of the palace into the 
poorhouse. If we felt sure that honest work shared 
by all would bring them honest food shared by all, 
some heroic few of us, who did not wish our children 
to rise above their fellows—though we could not 
bear to have them fall below—might trust them 
with the truth. But we have no such assurance; 
and so we go on trembling before Dryfooses, and 
living in gimerackeries.” 

‘Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more 
simply than you. You know I was!” 

‘“‘T know you always said so, my dear. But how 
many bell-ratchets and speaking-tubes would you be 
willing to have at the street door below? I re- 
member that when we were looking for a flat you 
rejected every building that had a bell-ratchet or a 
speaking-tube, and would have nothing to do with 
any that had more than an electric button; you 
wanted a hall-boy, with electric buttons all over him. 
I don’t blame you. I find such things quite as ne- 
cessary as you do.” 

‘“And do you mean to say, Basil,” she asked, 
abandoning this unprofitable branch of the inquiry, 
“that you are really uneasy about your place? that 
you are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an 
Angel, and Mr. Fulkerson may play you false 2” 

“Play me false? Oh, it wouldn’t be playing me 
false. It would be merely looking out for himself, 
if the new Angel had editorial tastes, and wanted my 
place. It’s what any one would do.” 

“You wouldn’t do it, Basil!” 

“Wouldn’t 1? Well, if any one offered me more 
salary than Avery Other Week pays—say twice as 
much—what do you think my duty to my suffering 
family would be? It’s give and take in the business 
world, Isabel; especially take. But as to being un- 
easy, I’m not, in the least. I’ve the spirit of a lion, 
when it comes to such a chance as that. When I 
see how readily the sensibilities of the passing 
stranger can be worked in New York, I think of 
taking up the role of that desperate man on Third 
Avenue, who went along looking for garbage in the 
gutter to eat. I think I could pick up at least 
twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game, and 
maintain my family jin the affluence it’s been ac- 
customed to.” 

“Basil!” cried his wife. ‘You don’t mean to say 
that man was an impostor! And I’ve gone about, 
ever since, feeling that one such case in a million, 
the bare possibility of it, was enough to justify all 
that Lindau said about the rich and the poor!” 

March laughed teasingly. “Oh, I don’t say he 
was an impostor. Perhaps he really was hungry; 
but if he wasn’t, what do you think of a civilization 
that makes the opportunity of such a fraud? that 
gives us all such a bad conscience for the need which 


152 


is, that we weaken to the need that isn’t? Suppose 
that poor fellow wasn’t personally founded on fact ; 
nevertheless, he represented the truth; he was the 
ideal of the suffering which would be less effective 
if realistically treated. That man is a great com- 
fort to me. He probably rioted for days on that 
quarter I gave him; made a dinner, very likely, or 
a champagne supper; and if Every Other Week 
wants to get rid of me, I intend to work that racket. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


' 


You can hang round the corner with Bella, and Tom — 


can come up to me in tears, at stated intervals, and 
ask me if ’ve found anything yet. To be sure, we 
might be arrested and sent up somewhere. But 
even in that extreme case we should be provided 
for. 
I’ve merely a sort of psychological curiosity to know 


how men like Dryfoos and Fulkerson will work out. _ 


the problem before them.” 


IX. 


Ir was a curiosity which Fulkerson himself shared, 
at least concerning Dryfoos. ‘I don’t know what 
the old man’s going to do,” he said to March, the 
day after the Marches had talked their future over. 
“Said anything to you yet?” 

“No, not a word.” 

“You’re anxious, I suppose, same as Iam. Fact 
is,” said Fulkerson, blushing a little, “I can’t ask 
to have a day named till I know where I am, in 
connection with the old man, I can’t tell whether 
I’ve got to look out for something else, or some- 
body else. Of course, it’s full soon yet.” 

‘Yes,’ March said, ‘much sooner than it seems 
to us. We’re so anxious about the future that we 
don’t. remember how very recent the past is.” 

“That’s something so. The old man’s hardly had 
time yet to pull himself together. Well, I’m glad 
you feel that way about it, March. I guess it’s more 
of a blow to him than we realize. He was a good 
deal bound up in Coonrod, though he didn’t always 
use him very well. Well, I reckon it’s apt to hap- 
pen so, oftentimes; curious how cruel love can be. 
Heigh? We're an awful mixture, March !” 

“Yes, that’s the marvel and the curse, as Brown- 
ing says.” 

“Why, that poor boy himself,” pursued Fulker- 
son, ‘‘had streaks of the mule in him that could 
give odds to Beaton, and he must have tried the 
old man by the way he would give in to his will, 
and hold out against his judgment. I don’t believe 
he ever budged a hair’s-breadth from his original 
position about wanting to be a preacher and not 
wanting to be a business man. Well, of course! 
Jf don’t think business is all in all; but it must 
have made the old man mad to find that without 
saying anything, or doing anything to show it, and 
after seeming to come over to his ground, and really 
coming, practically, Coonrod was just exactly where 
he first planted himself, every time.” 

‘““Yes, people that have convictions are ee 
Fortunately, they’re rare.”’ 

“Do you think so? It seems to me that every- 
body’s got convictions. Beaton himself, who hasn’t 
a principle to throw at a dog, has got convictions 
‘the size of a barn. They ain’t always the same 


‘ones, I know, but they’re always to the same effect,, 
as far as Beaton’s being Number One is concerned. 
The old man’s got convictions—or did have, unless. 


this thing’ lately has shaken him all up—and he: 


believes that money will do everything. Colonel: 


Woodburn’s got convictions that he wouldn’t part — 


with for untold millions. 
victions yourself !” 

““Have 1?” said March. 
they are.” 

“Well, neither do I; but I know you were ready 
to kick the trough over for them when the old man 
wanted us to bounce Lindau that time.” 

“Oh yes,” said March; he remembered the fact; 
but he was still uncertain just what the convictions. 
were that he had been so stanch for. 

‘“‘T suppose we could have got along without you,” 
Fulkerson mused aloud. “It’s astonishing how yow 
always can get along in this world without the man 
that is simply indispensable. Makes a fellow real- 
ize that he could take a day off now and then with- 
out deranging the solar system a great deal. Now 
here’s Coonrod—or rather, he isn’t. But that boy 
managed his part of the schooner so well that I 
used to tremble when I thought of his getting the: 
better of the old man, and going into a convent or 
something of that kind; and now here he is, snuffed 
out in half a second, and I don’t believe but what. 
we shall be sailing along just as chipper as usual 

‘inside of thirty days. I reckon it will bring the old 
man to the point when I come to talk with’ him 
about who’s to be put in Coonrod’s place. I don’t. 
like very well to start the subject with him; but ls 
‘got to be done some time.” 

“Yes,” March admitted. “It’s terrible to think 
how unnecessary even the best and wisest of us is 
to the purposes of Providence. When I looked at. 
that poor young fellow’s face sometimes—so gentle 
and true and pure—I used to think the world was 
appreciably richer for his being in it. But are we 
appreciably poorer for his being out of it now ?”. 

“No, I don’t reckon we are,” said Fulkerson. 
‘“‘ And what a lot of the raw material of all kinds 
the Almighty must have, to waste us the way he 
seems to do. 


Why, March, you got con- 


Oh no, I’m not afraid of losing my placef 


“T don’t know what. ~ 


nS Se ee Oe ee ee ee eae ee eS eG 


bad 


Think of throwing away a precious 


aa 
= 


«NVN ONIAG GH 40 GNVH AHL SGNVH UAH NuXMiau GadSV10 GIaH SHB, 


_ kerson startled March. . 
_ since yesterday.” 


ol 


going to or from the hospital; 


to some one remote or indifferent to us. 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


creature like Coonrod Dryfoos on one chance in a 
- thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindau out of 
_ the way of being clubbed! For I suppose that was 


what Coonrod was up to. Say! 

round to see Lindau to-day ?” 
Something in the tone-or the manner of Ful- 

aS No brol haven’t seen him 


Have you been 


“Well, I don’t know,” said Fitters “Teuess I 
saw him a little while after you did, and that young 
doctor there seemed to feel kind a worried about 
him. Or not worried, exactly; they can’t afford 
to let such things worry them, I suppose; but—” 

“‘He’s worse ?” asked March. 

“Oh, he didn’t say so. But I just wondered if 
you'd seen him to-day.” 

“T think [Pll go now,” said March, with a pang ‘at 
heart. He had gone every day to see Lindau, but 


this day he had thought he would not go, and that 


was why his heart smote him. He knew that if 


he were in Lindau’s place Lindau would never have 


left his side if he could have helped it. March 
tried to believe that the case was the same, as it 
stood now; it seemed to him that he was always 
he said to himself 
that it must do Lindau harm to be visited so much. 


But he knew that this was not true when he was 


In spite of the experience of the whole race from 
time immemorial, when death comes to any one we 
know we helplessly regard it as an incident of life, 
which will presently go on as before. Perhaps this 
is an instinctive perception of the truth that it. does 
go on somewhere; but we have a sense of death as 
absolutely the end even for earth, only if it relates 
March 
tried to project Lindau to the necessary distance 


' from himself in order to realize the fact in his case, 


head by a horse’s nose. 


but he could not, though the man with whom his 
youth had been associated in a poetic friendship had 
not actually re-entered the region of his affection to 
the same degree, or in any like degree. The changed 
conditions forbade that. He had a soreness of heart 
concerning him; but he could not make sure wheth- 
er this soreness was grief for his death, or remorse 
for his own uncandor with him about Dryfoos, or 


sa foreboding of that accounting with his conscience 
which he knew his wife would now exact of him 


down to the last minutest particular of their joint 
and several behavior toward Lindau ever since they 
had met him in New York. 

He felt something knock against his shoulder, 
and he looked up to have his hat struck from his 
He saw the horse put his 
foot on the hat, and he reflected, “‘ Now it will al- 


153 


met at the door of the ward where Lindau lay by 
the young doctor, who had come to feel a personal 
interest in March’s interest in Lindau. 

He smiled, without gayety, and said, ‘“He’s just 


going.” 
“What! Discharged ?” 
“Oh no. He has been failing very fast since you 


saw him yesterday, and now—” They had been 
walking.softly and talking softly down the aisle be- 
tween the long rows of beds. ‘“ Would you care 
to see him ?” 

The doctor made a slight gesture toward the white 
canvas screen which in such places forms the death- 
chamber of the poor and friendless. ‘Come round 
this way—he won’t know you! T’ve got rather fond 
of the poor old fellow. He wouldn’t have a clergy- 
man—sort of agnostic, isn’t he? A good many of 
these Germans are; but the young lady who’s been 
coming to see him—” 

They both stopped. Lindau’s grand, patriarchal 
head, foreshortened to their view, lay white upon the 
pillow, and his broad white beard flowed out over the 
sheet, which heaved with those long lagt breaths. 
Beside his bed Margaret Vance was kneeling; her 
veil was thrown back, and her face was lifted; she 
held clasped Between her hands the hand Of the 
dying man; she moved her lips inaudibly. 


ways look like an accordion,’ and he heard the 
horse’s driver address him some sarcasms before 
he could fully awaken to the situation. He was 
standing bareheaded in the middle of Fifth Avenue, 
and blocking the tide of carriages flowing in either 
direction. Among the faces put out of the carriage 
windows he saw that of Dryfoos looking from a 
coupé. The old man knew him, and said, “ Jump 
in here, Mr. March; and March, who had mechan- 
ically picked up his hat, and was thinking, “Now I 
shall have to tell Isabel about this at once, and she 
will never trust me on the street again without her,” 
mechanically obeyed. Her confidence in him had 
been undermined by his being so near Conrad when 
he was shot; and it went through his mind that he 
would get Dryfoos to drive him to a hatter’s, where 
he could buy a new hat, and not be obliged to con- 
fess his narrow escape to his wife till the incident 
was some days old and she could bear it better. 
It quite drove Lindau’s death out of his mind for 
the moment; and when Dryfoos said if he was go- 
ing home he would drive up to the first cross-street 
and turn back with him, March said he would be 
glad if he would take him to a hat-store. The old 
man put his head out again and told the driver to 
take them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. ‘There’s a 
hat-store around there somewhere, seems to me,” he 


154 


said; and they talked of March’s nocieeal as well 


as they could in the rattle and clatter of the street 


till they reached the place. March got his hat, pass- 
ing a joke with the hatter about the impossibility 
of pressing his old hat over again, and came out to 
thank Dryfoos and take leave of him. 

“Tf you ain’t in any great hurry,” the old man 
said, ‘I wish you’d get in here a minute. I'd like 
to have a little talk with you.” 

“Oh, certainly,” said March, and he thought: 
“‘Tt’s coming now about what he intends to do with 
Livery Other Week. Well, I might as well have all 
the misery at once and have it over.” 

Dryfoos called up to his driver, who bent his head 
down sidewise to listen: “Go over there on Madison 
Avenue, onto that asphalt, and keep drivin’ up and 
down till I stop you. I can’t hear myself think on 
these pavements,” he said to March. But after they 
got upon the asphalt, and began smoothly rolling 
over it, he seemed in no haste to begin. At last 
he said, “I wanted to talk with you about that— 
that Dutchman that was at my dinner—Lindau,” 
and March’s heart gave a jump with wonder wheth- 
er he could have already heard of Lindauw’s death; 
but in an instant he perceived that this was impos- 
sible. “T been talkin’ with Fulkerson about him, 
and he says they had to take the balance of his arm 
off.” 

March nodded; it seemed to him he could not 
speak. He could not make out from the close face 
of the old man anything of his motive. It was set, 
but set as a piece of broken mechanism is when it 
has lost the power to relax itself, There was no 
other history in it of what the man had passed 
through in his son’s death. 

“T don’t know,” Dryfoos resumed, looking aside 
at the cloth window-strap, which he kept fingering, 
“as you quite understood what made me the mad- 
dest. I didn’t tell him I could talk Dutch, because 
I can’t keep it up with a regular German; but my 
father was Pennsylvany Dutch, and I could under- 
stand what he was saying to you about me. I 
know I had no business to understood it, after I 
Jet him think I couldn’t; but I did, and I didn’t 
like very well to have a man callin’ me a traitor 
and a tyrant at my own table. Well, I look at it 
differently now, and I reckon I had better have 
tried to put up with it; and I would, if I could 
have known—” He stopped, with a quivering lip, 
and then went on. ‘Then, again, I didn’t like his 
talkin’ that paternalism of his. I always heard it 
was the worst kind of thing for the country; I was 
brought up to think the best government was the 
one that governs the least; and I didn’t want to 
hear that kind of talk from a man that was livin’ 
on my money. I couldn’t bearit from him. Or I 
thought I couldn’t before—before—” He stopped 
again, and gulped. “TI reckon now there ain’t any- 
thing I couldn’t bear.” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


March was moved by the blunt words and the 
mute stare forward with which they ended. “Mr. 
Dryfoos, I didn’t know that you understood Lin- 


dau’s German, or I shouldn’t have allowed him— 


he wouldn’t have allowed himself—to go on. He 
wouldn’t have knowingly abused his position of 
guest to censure you, no matter how much he con- 
demned you.” 

‘I don’t care for it now,” said Dryfoos. “Its 
all past and gone, as far as I’m concerned ; but I 
wanted you to see that I wasn’t tryin’ to punish 
him for his opinions, as you said.” 

“No; I see now,” March assented, though he 
thought his position still justified. “I wish—” 

“I don’t know as I understand much about his 
opinions, anyway; but I ain’t ready to say I want 
the men dependent on me to manage my business 
for me. I always tried to do the square thing by 
my hands; and in that particular case out there, I 
took on all the old hands just as fast as they left 
their Union. As for the game I came on then, it 
was dog eat dog, anyway.” 

March could have laughed to think how far this 
old man was from even conceiving of Lindau’s point 
of view, and how he was Saying the worst of him- 
self that Lindau could have said of him. No one 
could have characterized the kind of thing he had 
done more severely than he when he called it dog 
eat dog. 

“‘There’s a great deal to be said on both sides,” 
March began, hoping to lead up through this gen- 
erality to the fact of Lindau’s death; but the old 
man went on: 

“Well, all I wanted him to know is that I wasn’t 
trying to punish him for what he said about things 
in general. You naturally got that idea, I reckon ; 
but I always went in for lettin’ people say what 
they please and think what they please; it’s the 
only way in a free country.” 

“Tm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos, that it would make little 
difference to Lindau now—” 

“I don’t suppose he bears malice for it,” said 
Dryfoos, “ but what I want to do is to have him told 
so. He could understand just why I didn’t want 
to be called hard names, and yet I didn’t object to 
his thinkin’ whatever he pleased. I’d like him to 
know—” 

“No one can speak to him, no one can tell him,” 
March began again, but again Dryfoos prevented 
him from going on. 

“T understand it’s a delicate thing; and I’m not 
askin’ you to do it. What I would really like to 
do—if you think he could be prepared for it, some 
way, and could stand it—would be to go to him 
myself, and tell him just what the trouble was. 
I’m in hopes, if I done that, he could see how I felt 
about it.” 

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau 
with his vain regrets presented itself to March, and 


Ral ies 


he tried once more to make the old man under- 
stand. ‘Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, ‘‘ Lindau is past all 
that forever,” and he felt the ghastly comedy of it 
_ when Dryfoos continued, without heeding him: © 
“T got a particular reason why I want him to be- 
lieve it wasn’t his ideas I objected to—them ideas 
| _of his about the government carryin’ everything on 
and givin’ work. 
but I found a writin’-—among—my son’s — things” 
qhe seemed to force the words through his teeth), 
| “and I reckon he—thought—that way. Kind of 
a diary—where he—put down—his thoughts. My 
son and me—we differed about a good —many 
| things.” His chin shook, and from time to time 
he stopped. “I wasn’t very good to him, I reckon; 
I crossed him where I guess I got no business to 
erossed him; but I thought everything of—-Coon- 


rod. He was the best boy, from a baby, that ever 
: _ was; just so patient and mild, and done whatever he 
was told. I ought to ’a’ let him been a preacher! 
\ 0 my son, my son!” The sobs could not be kept 
back any longer; they shook the old man with a 
violence that made March afraid for him; but he 
controlled himself at last with a series of hoarse 
sounds like barks. “ Well, it’s all past and gone! 
But as I understand you from what you saw, when— 
Coonrod—was—killed, he was tryin’ to save that old 
~ man from trouble ?” 

“Yes, yes! It seemed so to me.” 
“That ll do, then! I want you to have him come 
_ back and write for the book when he gets well. I 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


I don’t understand ’em exactly, | 


155 


want you to find out and let me know if there’s any- 
thing I can do for him. Ill feel as if I done it— 
for my—son. IJ’ll take him into my own house, and 
do for him there, if you say so, when he gets so he 
can be moved. IT’ll wait on him myself. It’s what 
Coonrod ’d do, if he was here. I don’t feel any 
hardness to him because it was him that got Coon- 
rod killed, as you might say, in one sense of the 
term; but I’ve tried to think it out, and I feel like 
I was all the more beholden to him because my son 
died tryin’ to save him. Whatever I do, I'll be 
doin’ it for Coonrod, and that’s enough for me.” 
He seemed to have finished, and he turned to March 
as if to hear what he had to say. 

March hesitated. “I’m afraid, Mr. Dryfoos— 
Didn’t Fulkerson tell you that Lindau was very 
sick !” 

“Yes, of course. But he’s all right, he said.” 

Now it had to come, though the fact had been 
latterly playing fast and loose with March’s con- 
sciousness. Something almost made him smile; the 
willingness he had once felt to give this old man 
pain; then he consoled himself by thinking that, at 
least he was not obliged to meet Dryfoos’s wish to 
make atonement with the fact that Lindau had re- 
nounced him, and would on no terms work for such 
a man as he, or suffer any kindness from him. In 
this light Lindau seemed the harder of the two, and 
March had the momentary force to say: ‘‘ Mr. Dry- 
foos—it can’t be. Lindau—I have just come from 
him—is dead.” 


XI. 


“How did he take it? How could he bear it? 
Oh, Basil, I wonder you could have the heart to 
say it to him. It was cruel!” 

_ “Yes, cruel enough, my dear,” March owned to 
his wife, when they talked the matter over on his 
' return home. He could not wait till the children 
were out of the way, and afterward neither he nor 
his wife was sorry that he had spoken of it before 
them. The girl cried plentifully for her old friend 
who was dead, and said she hated Mr. Dryfoos, and 
then was sorry for him, too; and the boy listened 
to all, and spoke with a serious sense that pleased 
his father. ‘But as to how he took it,” March 
went on to answer his wife’s question about Dry- 
foos, “how do any of us take a thing that hurts? 
Some of us cry out, and some of us—don’t. Dryfoos 
drew a kind of long, quivering breath, as a child 
' does when it grieves—there’s something curiously 
simple and primitive about him—and didn’t say any- 
thing. After a while he asked me how he could see 
the people at the hospital about the remains; I 
gave him my card to the young doctor there that 
had charge of Lindau. I suppose he was still car- 


rying forward his plan of reparation in his mind— 
to the dead for the dead. But how useless! If he 
could have taken the living Lindau home with him, 
and cared for him all his days, what would it have 
profited the gentle creature whose life his worldly 
ambition vexed and thwarted here? He might as 
well offer a sacrifice at Conrad’s grave. Children,” 
said March, turning to them, “death is an exile that 
no remorse and no love can reach. Remember that, 
and be good to every one here on earth, for your 
longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to 
the dead will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. 
I wonder,” he mused, “if one of the reasons why 
we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be 
hereafter isn’t that we should be still more brutal 
to one another here, in the hope of making repara- 
tion somewhere else. Perhaps, if we ever come to 
obey the law of love on earth, the mystery of death 
will be taken away.” 

“ Well”—the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs. 
March —“‘these two old men have been terribly 
punished. They have both been violent and wilful, 
and they have both been punished. No one need 


156 


ever tell me there is not a moral government of 
the universe!” | 

March always disliked to hear her talk in this 
way, which did both her head and heart injustice. 
“‘And Conrad,” he said, “what was he punished 
for ?” 

“He?” she answered, in an exaltation; ‘he suf- 
fered for the sins of others.” 

“Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. 
goes on continually. That’s another mystery.” 

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard 
his son saying, “I suppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau 
died in a bad cause ?” 

March was startled. He had always been so sorry 
for Lindau, and admired his courage and generosity 
so much, that he had never fairly considered this 
question. ‘“ Why, yes,” he answered; “he died in 
the cause of disorder; he was trying to obstruct 
the law. No doubt there was a wrong there, an in- 
consistency and an injustice that he felt keenly; 
but it could not be reached in his way without 
greater wrong.” 

“Yes; that’s what I thought,” said the boy. “And 
what’s the use of our ever fighting about anything 
in America? I always thought we could vote any- 
thing we wanted.” 

“We can, if we’re honest, and don’t buy and sell 
one another’s votes,” said his father. ‘ And men 
like Lindau, who renounce the American means as 
hopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them 
into sympathy with violence, yes, they are wrong; 
and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause, as you say, 
Tom.” 

‘“‘T think Conrad had no business there, or you 
either, Basil,” said his wife. 

“Oh, I don’t defend myself,” said March. “TI 
was there in the cause of literary curiosity and of 
conjugal disobedience. But Conrad—yes, he had 
some business there: it was his business to suffer 
there for the sins of others. Isabel, we can’t throw 
aside that old doctrine of the Atonement yet. The 
life of Christ, it wasn’t only in healing the sick and 
going about to do good; it was suffering for the 


That 


XI. 


Ir was in a manner grotesque, but to March it 
was all the more natural for that reason, that Dry- 
foos should have Lindau’s funeral from his house. 
He knew the old man to be darkly groping, through 
the payment of these vain honors to the dead, for 
some atonement to his son, and he imagined him 
finding in them such comfort as comes from doing 
all one can, even when all is useless. 

No one knew what Lindau’s religion was, and in 
default they had had the Anglican burial service 
read over him; it seems the refuge of all the home- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


sins of others! That’s as great a mystery as the 
mystery of death. Why should there be such a 
principle in the world? But it’s been felt, and 
more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since 
Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even 
wish to suffer for them. That’s what has created 


the religious orders in all times—the brotherhoods __ 
and sisterhoods that belong to our day—as much as — i 


to the medieval past. That’s what is driving a girl 


like Margaret Vance, who has everything that the 
world can offer her young beauty, on to the work — 


of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.” 

“Yes, yes !”’ cried Mrs. March. 
she look there, Basil?” She had her feminine mis- 
givings; she was not sure but the girl was some- 
thing of a posewse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, 
as well as the pain; and she wished to be convinced 
that it was not so. 

“Well,” she said, when March had told again the 
little there was to tell, “I suppose it must be a great 
trial to 4 woman like Mrs. Horn to have her niece 
going that way.” 

‘The way of Christ?” asked March, with a smile. 

“‘Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how 
to live rightly in it, too. If we were all to spend 
our time in hospitals, it would be rather dismal for 
the homes. But perhaps you don’t think the homes 
are worth minding?” she suggested, with a certain 
note in her voice that he knew. 

He got up and kissed her. “I think the gim- 
crackeries are.” He took the hat he had set down 
on the parlor table on coming in, and started to put 
it in the hall, and that made her notice it. 

“You've been getting a new hat!” 

“Yes,” he hesitated; “the old one had got—was 
decidedly shabby.” 

“Well, that’s right. I don’t like you to wear 
them too long. Did you leave the old one to be 
pressed ?” 

“Well, the hatter seemed to think it was hardly 
worth pressing,” said March. He decided that for 
the present his wife’s nerves had quite all they could 
bear. 


less dead, Mrs. Dryfoos came down for the cere- 
mony. She understood that it was for Coonrod’s 
sake that his father wished the funeral to be there; 
and she confided to Mrs. March that she believed 
Coonrod would have been pleased. ‘“Coonrod was 
a member of the ’Piscopal Church; and fawther’s 
doin’ the whole thing for Coonrod as much as for 
anybody. He thought the world of Coonrod, fawther 
did. Mela, she kind of thought it would look queer 
to have two funerals from the same house, hand- 


runnin’, as you might call it, and one of ’em no re- 


“ How—how did 


od ‘4 
7 - 
‘ ma 
é 
Ce ee ee ee eS 


Fs 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Jation, either; but when she saw how fawther was 
pent on it, she give in. Seems as if she was tryin’ 
to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she 
could. Mela always was a good child, but nobody 
gan ever come up to Coonrod.”’ 

_ March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless ab- 
surdity of Dryfoos’s endeavor at atonement in these 
vain obgequies to the man for whom he believed his 
son to have died; but the effort had its magnanim- 
ity, its pathos, af there was a poetry that appealed 
to him in this reconciliation through death of men, 
‘of ideas, of conditions, that could only have gone 
warring on in life. He thought, as the priest went 
‘on with the solemn liturgy, how all the world must 
come together in that peace which, struggle and 
strive as we may, shall claim us at last. He looked 
at Dryfoos, and wondered whether he would consid- 
" er these rites a sufficient tribute, or whether there 
_ was enough in him to make him meglize their futil- 
Re except as a mere sign of his wish to retrieve 
‘the past. He thought how we never can atone for 
Bie wrong we do; the heart we have grieved and 


wounded cannot kindle with pity for us when once 
it is stilled; and yet we can put our evil from us 


"with penitence ; and somehow, somewhere the order 
ig loving-kindness, which our passion or our wilful- 
‘ness has disturbed, will be restored. 

‘Dryfoos, through Fulkerson, had asked all the 
“more intimate contributors of Hvery Other Week 
to come. Beaton was absent, but Fulkerson had 
brought Miss Woodburn, with her father, and Mrs. 
"Leighton and Alma, to fill up, as he said. Mela 
was much present, and was official with the arrange- 
ment of the flowers and the welcome of the guests. 
She imparted this impersonality to her reception of 
Kendricks, whom Fulkerson met in the outer hall 


with his party, and whom he presented in whisper 
to them all. 


Kendricks smiled under his breath, 
_ as it were, and was then mutely and seriously polite 
to the Leightons. Alma brought a little bunch of 
flowers, which were lost in the presence of those 


_ which Dryfoos had ordered to be unsparingly pro- 


i _ vided. 


It was a kind of satisfaction to Mela to have 


_ Miss Vance come, and reassuring as to how it would 


look to have the funeral there; Miss Vance would 
certainly not have come unless it had been all right ; 
she had come, and had sent some Easter lilies. 

“ Ain’t Christine coming down ?” Fulkerson asked 


Mela. 


ar 


over her,” said Mela. 


“No; she ain’t a bit well, and she ’ain’t been, 
ever since Coonrod died. I don’t know what’s Bot 
She added, ‘‘ Well, I should ’a’ 
thought Mr. Beaton would ’a’ made out to’a’ come! 9 

“Beaton’s peculiar,” said Fulkerson. “If he 
thinks you want him he takes a pleasure in not 
letting you have him.” 


157 


“Well, goodness knows, J don’t want him,” said 
the girl. 

Christine kept her room, and for the most part 
kept her bed; but there seemed nothing definitely 
the matter with her, and she would not let them 
call a doctor.- Her mother said she reckoned she 
was beginning to feel the spring weather, that al- 
ways perfectly pulled a body down in New York; 
and Mela said if being as cross as two sticks was 
any sign of spring fever, Christine had it bad. She 
was faithfully kind to her, and submitted to all her 
humors, but she recompensed herself by the freest 
criticism of Christine when not in actual attendance 
on her. Christine would not suffer Mrs. Mandel to 
approach her, and she had with her father a sullen 
submission which was not resignation. For her, ap- 
parently, Conrad had not died, or had died in 
vain. 

“Pshaw !”” said Mela, one morning when she came 
to breakfast, ‘I reckon if we was to send up an old 
card of Mr. Beaton’s she’d rattle down-stairs fast 
enough. If she’s sick, she’s love-sick. It makes 
me sick to see her.” 

Mela was talking to Mrs. Mandel, but her father 
looked up from his plate, and listened. Mela went 
on: “J don’t know what’s made the fellow quit 
comun’. But he was an aggravatun’ thing, and no 
more dependable than water. It’s just like Mr. Ful- 
kerson said, if he thinks you want him he’ll take a 
pleasure in not lettun’ you have him. I reckon 
that’s what’s the matter with Christine. I believe 
in my heart the girl "ll die if she don’t git him.” 

Mela went on to eat her breakfast with her own 
good appetite. She now always came down to keep 
her father company, as she said, and she did her 
best to cheer and comfort him. We least she kept 
the talk going, and she had it nearly all to herself, 
for Mrs. Mandel was now merely staying on provis- 
ionally, and in the absence of any regrets or excuses 
from Christine, was looking ruefully forward to the 
moment when she must leave even this ungentle 
home for the chances of the ruder world outside. 

The old man said nothing at table, but when Mela 
went up to see if she could do anything for Chris- 
tine, he asked Mrs. Mandel again about all the facts 
of her last interview with Beaton. 

She gave them as fully as she could remember 
them, and the old man made no comment on them. 
But he went out directly after, and at Hvery Other 
Week office he climbed the stairs to Fulkerson’s 
room, and asked for Beaton’s address. No one yet 
had taken charge of Conrad’s work, and Fulkerson 
was running the thing himself, as he said, till he 
could talk with Dryfoos about it. The old man 
would not look into the empty room where he had 
last seen his son alive; he turned his face away, 
and hurried by the door. 


158 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


XIII. 


TuE course of public events carried Beaton’s pri- 
vate affairs beyond the reach of his simple first in- 
tention to renounce his connection with Hvery Other 
Week. In fact this was not perhaps so simple as 
it seemed, and long before it could be put in effect 
it appeared still simpler to do nothing about the 
matter: to remain passive and leave the initiative 
to Dryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconscious- 
ness, and let recognition of any change in the situa- 
tion come from those who had caused the change. 
After all, it was rather absurd to propose making a 
purely personal question the pivot on which his re- 
lations with Hvery Other Week turned. He took a 


hint from March’s position and decided that he did | 


not know Dryfoos in these relations ; he only knew 
Fulkerson, who had certainly had nothing to do with 
Mrs. Mandel’s asking his intentions. As he reflect- 
ed upon this he became less eager to look Fulker- 
son up and make the magazine a partner of his 
own sufferings. This was the soberer mood to 
which Beaton trusted that night even before he 
slept, and he awoke fully confirmed in it. As he 
examined the offence done him in the cold light of 
day, he perceived that it had not come either from 


Mrs. Mandel, who was visibly the faltering and un- 


willing instrument of it, or from Christine, who was 
altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos, whom 
he could not hurt by giving up his place. He could 
only punish Fulkerson by that, and Fulkerson was 
innocent. Justice and interest alike dictated the 
passive course to which Beaton inclined; and he re- 
flected that he might safely leave the punishment 
of Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what 
had happened, and would be able to take care of 
herself in any encounter of tempers with her father. 

Beaton did not go to the office during the week 
that followed upon this conclusion; but they were 
used, there, to these sudden absences of his, and as 
his work for the time was in train, nothing was 
made of his staying away, except the sarcastic com- 
ment which the thought of him was apt to excite 
in the literary department. He no longer came so 
much to the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no 
state of mind to miss any one there except Miss 
Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was 
left, then, unmolestedly awaiting the turn of des- 
tiny, when he read in the morning paper, over his 
coffee at Maroni’s, the deeply scare-headed story of 
Conrad’s death and the clubbing of Lindau. He 
probably cared as little for either of them as any 
man that ever saw them; but he felt a shock if not 
a pang at Conrad’s fate, so out of keeping with his 
life and character. He did not know what to do; 
and he did nothing. He was not asked to the fu- 
neral, but he had not expected that, and when Ful- 


kerson brought him notice that Lindau was also to 
be buried from Dryfoos’s house, it was without his 
usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away. In 
his sort, and as much as a man could who was 
necessarily so much taken up with himself, he was — 
sorry for Conrad’s father; Beaton had a peculiar 
tenderness for his own father, and he imagined how 
his father would feel if it were he who had been 
killed in Conrad’s place, as it might very well have 
been; he sympathized with himself in view of the 
possibility ; and for once they were mistaken who 
thought him indifferent and merely brutal in his 
failure to appear at Lindau’s obsequies. 

He would really have gone if he had known how 
to reconcile his presence in that house with the 
terms of his effective banishment from it; and he 
was rather forgivingly finding himself wronged in 
the situation, when Dryfoos knocked at the studio 
door the morning after Lindau’s funeral. Beaton 
roared out ‘‘Come in!” as he always did to a knock 
if he had not a model: if he had a model he set 
the door slightly ajar, and with his palette on his 
thumb frowned at his visitor, and told him he could 
not come in. Dryfoos fumbled about for the knob 
in the dim passageway outside, and Beaton, who had 
experience of people’s difficulties with it, suddenly 
jerked the door open. The two men stood confront- 
ed, and at first sight of each. other their quiescent 
dislike revived. Each would have been willing to 
turn away from the other, but that was not pos- 
sible. Beaton snorted some sort of inarticulate 
salutation, which Dryfoos did not try to return; he 
asked if he could see him alone fora minute or 
two, and Beaton bade him come in, and swept some 
paint-blotched rags from the chair which he told 
him to take. He noticed, as the old man sank 
tremulously into it, that his movement was like that 
of his own father, and also that he looked very 
much like Christine. Dryfoos folded his hands 
tremulously on the top of his horn-handled stick, 
and he was rather finely haggard, with the dark 
hollows round his black eyes, and the fall of the 
muscles on either side of his chin. He had for- 
gotten to take his soft, wide-brimmed hat off; and 
Beaton felt a desire to sketch him just as he sat. 

Dryfoos suddenly pulled himself together from 
the dreary absence into which he fell at first. 
“Young man,” he began, ‘‘maybe I’ve come here 
on a fool’s errand,” and Beaton rather fancied that 
beginning. 

But it embarrassed him a little, and he said, with 
a shy glance aside, ‘I don’t know what you mean.” 

“T reckon,” Dryfoos answered quietly, “‘you got 
your notion, though. I set that woman on to speak 
to you the way she done. But if there was anything 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


-wrong in the way she spoke, or if you didn’t feel 
like she had any right to question you up as if we 
suspected you of anything mean, I want you to say 
so.” 

Beaton said nothing, and the old man went on. 

“JT ain’t very well up in the ways of the world, and 
I don’t pretend to be. All I want is to be fair and 
_ square with everybody. I’ve made mistakes, though, 
in my time—” He stopped, and Beaton was not 
- proof against the misery of his face, which was twist- 
ed as with some strong physical ache. “I don’t 
know as I want to make any more, if I can help it. 
I don’t know but what you had a right to keep on 
comin’, and if you had, I want you to say so. Don’t 
you be afraid but what [ll take it in the right way. 
I don’t want to take advantage of anybody; and I 
don’t ask you to say any more than that.” 

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man 
who had humiliated him so sweet as he could have 
fancied it might be. He knew how it had come 
about, and that it was an effect of love for his child ; 
it did not matter by what ungracious means she had 
brought him to know that he loved her better than 
his own will, that his wish for her happiness was 
stronger than his pride; it was enough that he was 
now somehow brought to give proof of it. Beaton 

could not be aware of all that dark coil of cir- 
cumstance through which Dryfoos’s present action 
evolved itself; the worst of this was buried in the 
secret of the old man’s heart, a worm of perpetual 
‘torment. What was apparent to another was that 
he was broken by the sorrow that had fallen upon 
him, and it was this that Beaton respected and pitied 
in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer. 

“No, [had no right to keep coming to your house 
in the way I did, unless—unless I meant more than 

lever said.” Beaton added, ‘‘I don’t say that what 
you did was usual—in this country, at any rate; 
but I can’t say you were wrong. Since you speak to 
me about the matter, it’s only fair to myself to say 
that a good deal goes on in life without much think- 
ing of consequences. That’s the way I excuse my- 
self.” 

“ And you say Mrs. Mandel done right?” asked 
Dryfoos, as if he wished simply to be assured of a 
point of etiquette. 

“Yes, she did right. Ive nothing to complain of.” 

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Dryfoos ; 
but apparently he had not finished, and he did not 
go, though the silence that Beaton now kept gave 
him a chance to do so. He began a series of ques- 
tions which had no relation to the matter in hand, 
though they were strictly personal to Beaton. 
“What countryman are you ?” he asked, after a mo- 
ment. 

“What countryman?” Beaton frowned back at 
him. 

“Yes; are you an American by birth ?” 

“Yes; I was born in Syracuse.” 


159 


“Protestant ?” 

‘“‘ My father is a Scotch Seceder.” 

‘What business is your father in ?” 

Beaton faltered and blushed; then he answered, 
““He’s in the monument business, as he calls it. 
He’s a tombstone cutter.” Now that he was launch- 
ed, Beaton saw no reason for not declaring, “‘ My 
father’s always been a poor man, and worked with 
his own hands for his living.” He had too slight 
esteem socially for Dryfoos to conceal a fact from 
him that he might have wished to blink with others. 

“Well, that’s right,” said Dryfoos. ‘‘I used to 
farm it myself. Tve got a good pile of money to- 
gether now. At first it didn’t come easy; but now 
it’s got started it pours in and pours in; it seems 
like there was no end to it. Dve got well on to 
three million; but it couldn’t keep me from losin’ 
my son. It can’t buy me back a minute of his life; 
not all the money in the world can do it!” 

He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to 
Beaton, who scarcely ventured to say, “I know—I 
am very sorry—”’ ; 

‘How did you come, ” Dryfoos interrupted, ‘to 
take up paintin’ ?” 

“Well, I don’t know,” said Beaton, a little scorn- 
fully. “ You don’t take a thing of that kind up, I 
fancy. I always wanted to paint.” 

“ Father try to stop you?” 

“No. It wouldn’t have been of any use. 
Why— ”? 

‘My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did 
stop hAim—or I thought I did. But I reckon he was 
a preacher, all the same, every minute of his life. 
As you say, it ain’t any use to try to stop a thing 
like that. I reckon if a child has got any particular 
bent, it was given to it; and it’s goin’ against the 
grain, it’s goin’ against the law, to try to bend it 
some other way. There’s lots of good business men, 
Mr. Beaton, twenty of ’em to every good preacher ?” 

“T imagine more than twenty,” said Beaton, 
amused and touched through his curiosity as to 
what the old man was driving at, by the quaint sim- 
plicity of his speculations. 

“‘ Father ever come to the city ?” 

‘No; he never has the time ; and my mother’s an 
invalid.” 

“Oh! Brothers and sisters ?” 

“Yes; we’re a large family.” 

“T lost two little fellers—twins,” said Dryfoos, 
sadly. ‘But we hain’t ever had but just the five. 
Ever take portraits ?” 

“Yes,” said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the 
queries as seriously as the rest. ‘I don’t think I 
am good at it.” 

Dryfoos got to his feet. “I wished you’d paint 
a likeness of my son. You’ve seen him plenty of 
times. We woon’t fight about the price; don’t you 
be afraid of that.” 

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way 


160 


he was disgusted. He saw that Dryfoos was trying 
to undo Mrs. Mandel’s work practically, and get him 
to come again to his house; that he now conceived 
of the offense given him as condoned, and wished 
to restore the former situation. He knew that he 
was attempting this for Christine’s sake, but he 
was not the man to imagine that Dryfoos was 
trying not only to tolerate him but to like him; 
and in fact Dryfoos was not wholly conscious him- 
self of this end. What they both understood was 
that Dryfoos was endeavoring to get at Beaton 
through Conrad’s memory; but with one this was 
its dedication to a purpose of self-sacrifice, and with 
the other a vulgar and shameless use of it. 

“T couldn’t do it,” said Beaton. ‘I couldn’t 
think of attempting it.” 

“Why not?” Dryfoos persisted. ‘‘ We got some 
photographs of him; he didn’t like to sit very well; 
but his mother got him to; and you know how he 
looked.” 

“T couldn’t do it—I couldn’t. I can’t even con- 
sider it. I’m very sorry. I would, if it were possi- 
ble. But it isn’t possible.” 

“Tt reckon, if you see the photographs once—” 

“Tt isn’t that, Mr. Dryfoos. But I’m not in the 
way of that kind of thing any more.” 

“Td give any price you’ve a mind to name—” 

“Oh, it isn’t the money !” cried Beaton, beginning 
to lose control of himself. 

The old man did not notice him. He sat with 
his head fallen forward, and his chin resting on his 
folded hands. Thinking of the portrait, he saw 
Conrad’s face before him, reproachful, astonished, 
but all gentle, as it looked when Conrad caught his 
hand that day after he struck him; he heard him 
say, “‘ Father!’ and the sweat gathered on his fore- 
head. ‘Oh, my God!” he groaned. ‘No; there 
ain’t anything I can do, now.” 

Beaton did not know whether Dryfoos was speak- 
ing to him or not. He started toward him: “ Are 
you ill ?” 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“No, there ain’t anything the matter,” said the 
old man. ‘But I guess I’ll lay down on your settee 
a minute.’ He tottered with Beaton’s help to the 
esthetic couch covered with a tiger-skin, on which 
Beaton had once thought of painting a Cleopatra; 
but he could never get the right model. As the old 
man stretched himself out on it, pale and suffering, 
he did not look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton 
was struck with his effectiveness, and the likeness 
between him and his daughter; she would make a 
very good Cleopatra in some ways. All the time, 
while these thoughts passed through his mind, he 
was afraid Dryfoos would die. The old man fetched 
his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed and 
lengthened into his normal breathing. Beaton got 


him a glass of wine, and after tasting it he sat up. 
‘“‘You’ve got to excuse me,” he said, getting back | 


to his characteristic grimness with surprising sud- 
denness, when once he began to recover himself. 
“T’ve been through a good deal, lately; and some- 
times it ketches me round the heart like a pain.” 
In his life of selfish immunity from grief Beaton 
could not understand this experience that poignant 
sorrow brings; he said to himself that Dryfoos was 


q 
| 


going the way of angina pectoris; as he began 


shuffling off the tiger-skin he said, “‘ Had you better 
get up? Wouldn’t you like me to call a doctor ?” 

“Tm all right, young man.” Dryfoos took his 
hat and stick from him, but he made for the door 
so uncertainly that Beaton put his hand under his 


elbow and helped him out, and down the stairs,to 


his coupé. 

“Hadn’t you better let me drive home with you ?” 
he asked. 

‘““ What?” said Dryfoos, suspiciously. 

Beaton repeated his question. 

“T guess I’m able to go home alone,” said Dry- 
foos in a surly tone, and he put his head out of the 
window and called up, ‘‘ Home!” to the driver, who 
immediately started off, and left Beaton standing be- 
side the curb-stone. 


XIV. 


BEATON wasted the rest of the day in the emotions 
and speculations which Dryfoos’s call inspired. It 
was not that they continuously occupied him, but 
they broke up the train of other thoughts, and spoil- 
ed him for work; a very little spoiled Beaton for 
work; he required just the right mood for work. 
He comprehended perfectly well that Dryfoos had 
made him that extraordinary embassy because he 
wished him to renew his visits, and he easily ima- 
gined the means that had brought him to this pass. 
From what he knew of that girl he did not envy 
her father his meeting with her when he must 
tell her his mission had failed. But had it failed ? 
When Beaton came to ask himself this question, he 


could only perceive that he and Dryfoos had failed 


to find any ground of sympathy, and had parted in 
the same dislike with which they had met. But as 
to any other failure, it was certainly tacit, and it 
still rested with him to give it effect. He could go 
back to Dryfoos’s house as freely as before, and it 
was clear that he was very much desired to come 
back. But if he went back, it was also clear that 
he must go back with intentions more explicit than 
before, and now he had to ask himself just how 
much or how little he had meant by going there. 
His liking for Christine had certainly not increased, 
but the charm, on the other hand, of holding a leo- 


pardess in leash had not yet palled upon him. In 


ee ee ee 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


his life of inconstancies it was a pleasure to rest 
upon something fixed, and the man who had no con- 
trol over himself liked logically enough to feel his 
control of some one else. The fact cannot otherwise 
be put in terms, and the attraction which Christine 
Dryfoos had for him, apart from this, escapes from 
all terms, as anything purely and merely passional 
must. He had seen from the first that she was a 
cat, and so far as youth forecasts such things, he 
felt that she would be a shrew. But he had a per- 
verse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort of life 
in which her power to molest him with her temper 
could be reduced to the smallest proportions, and 
even broken to pieces. Then the consciousness of 
her money entered. It was evident that the old 
man had mentioned his millions in the way of a 
hint to him of what he might reasonably expect if 
he would turn and be his son-in-law. Beaton did 
not put it to himself in those words; and in fact 
his cogitations were not in words at all. It was the 
play of cognitions, of sensations, formlessly tending 
to the effect which can only be very clumsily inter- 
preted in language. But when he got to this point 
in them Beaton rose to magnanimity, and in a flash 
of dramatic revery disposed of a part of Dryfoos’s 
riches in placing his father and mother, and his 
brothers and sisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety 
forever. He had no shame, no scruple in this, for 
he had been a pensioner upon others ever since a 
Syracusan amateur of the arts had detected his 
talent, and given him the money to go and study 
abroad. Beaton had always considered the money 
a loan, to be repaid out of his future success; but 
he now never dreamt of repaying it; as the man 
was rich, he had even a contempt for the notion of 
repaying him; but this did not prevent him from 
feeling very keenly the hardships he put his father 
to in borrowing money from him, though he never 
repaid his father, either. In this revery he saw 
himself sacrificed in marriage with Christine Dry- 
foos in a kind of admiring self-pity, and he was 
melted by the spectacle of the dignity with which 
he suffered all the life-long trials ensuing from his 
unselfishness. The fancy that Alma Leighton came 
bitterly to regret him, contributed to soothe and 
flatter him, and he was not sure that Margaret 
Vance did not suffer a like loss in him. ; 
There had been times when, as he believed, that 
beautiful girl’s high thoughts had tended toward 
him, there had been looks, gestures, even words, that 
had this effect to him, or now seemed to have had 
it; and Beaton saw that he might easily construe 
Mrs. Horn’s confidential appeal to him to get Mar- 
garet interested in art again, as something by no 
means necessarily offensive, even though it had been 
made to him-as to a master of illusion. If Mrs. 
Horn had to choose between him and the life of 
good works to which her niece was visibly aban- 
doning herself, Beaton could not doubt which she 


11 


161 


would choose; the only question was how real the 
danger of a life of good works was. 

As he thought of these two girls, one so charming 
and the other so divine, it became indefinitely diffi- 
cult to renounce them for Christine Dryfoos, with 
her sultry temper, and her earth-bound ideals. Life 
had been so flattering to Beaton hitherto that he 
could not believe them both finally indifferent ; and 
if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did not wish 
either of them to be very definite. What he really 
longed for was their sympathy; for a man who is 
able to walk round quite ruthlessly on the feelings 
of others often has very tender feelings of his own, 
easily lacerated, and eagerly responsive to the ca- 
resses of compassion. In this frame Beaton deter- 
mined to go that afternoon, though it was not Mrs. 
Horn’s day, and call upon her in the hope of possi- 
bly seeing Miss Vance alone. As he continued in 
it, he took this for a sign, and actually went. It did 
not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. 
Horn to talking again about her niece, and Mrs. Horn 
again regretted that nothing could be done by the 
fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works. 

“Ts she at home? Will you let me see her?” 
asked Beaton, with something of the scientific in- 
terest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose 
symptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had 
not asked for her before. 

“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Horn, and she went 
herself to call Margaret, and she did not return 
with her. The girl entered with the gentle grace 
peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his 
own consolation, could not help being struck with 
the spiritual exaltation of her look. At sight of 
her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquish- 
ed, that they might be something more than esthetic 
friends, died in his heart. She wore black, as she 
often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress re- 
ceived a nun-like effect from the pensive absence 
of her face. ‘‘ Decidedly,” thought Beaton, “she is 
far gone in good works.” 

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old 
level, and he began at once to talk to her of the 
subject he had been discussing with her aunt. He 
said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably 
turned her back upon possibilities which she ought 
not to neglect. 

“You know very well,” she answered, “that I 
couldn’t do anything in that way worth the time I 
should waste on it. Don’t talk of it, please. I sup- 
pose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but 
it’s no use. I’m sorry it’s no use, she wishes it 
so much; but I’m not sorry otherwise. You can 
find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it; 
but I couldn’t find anything in it but a barren amuse- 
ment. Mr. Wetmore is right; for me, it’s like enjoy- 
ing an opera, or a ball.” 

‘“‘That’s one of Wetmore’s phrases. He’d sacrifice 
anything to them.” 


162 


She put aside the whole subject with a look. 
“You were not at Mr. Dryfoos’s the other day. 
Have you seen them, any of them, lately ?” 

“T haven’t been there for some time, no,” said 
Beaton, evasively. But he thought if he was to get 
on to anything, he had better be candid. ‘Mr. 
Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He’s 
got a queer notion. He wants me to paint his son’s 
portrait.” 

She started. ‘And will you—” 

“No, I couldn’t do such a thing. It isn’t in my 
way. I told him so. His son had a beautiful face 
—an antique profile; a sort of early Christian type; 
but I’m too much a a pagan for that sort of thing.” 

ics Yes. ” 

“Yes,” Beaton Wintinied: not quite liking her 
assent, after he had invited it. He had his pride in 
being a pagan, a Greek, but it failed him in her 
presence, now; and he wished that she had protest- 
ed he was none. “He was a singular creature; a 
kind of survival; an exile in our time and place. I 
don’t know: we don’t quite expect a saint to be 
rustic; but with all his goodness Conrad Dryfoos 
was a country person. If he were not dying fora 
cause, you could imagine him milking.” Beaton in- 
tended a contempt that came from the bitterness of 
having himself once milked the family cow. 

His contempt did not reach Miss Vance. 
died for a cause,” she said. ‘“* The holiest.” 

“Of labor ?” 

“Of peace. He was there to persuade the strikers 
to be quiet and go home.” 


cc He 


“T haven’t been quite sure,” said Beaton. ‘‘ But 
in any case he had no business there. The police 
were on hand to do the persuading.” 

“T can’t let you talk so!” cried the girl. “It’s 


shocking! Oh, I know it’s the way people talk, and 
the worst is that in the sight of the world it’s the 
right way. But the blessing on the peacemakers is 
not for the policemen with their clubs.” 

Beaton saw that she was nervous; he made his 
reflection that she was altogether too far gone in 
good works for the fine arts to reach her; he began 
to think how he could turn her primitive Christian- 
ity to the account of his modern heathenism. He 
had no deeper design than to get flattered back into 
his own favor far enough to find courage for some 
sort of decisive step. In his heart he was trying 
to will whether he should or should not go back 
to Dryfoos’s house. It could not be from the ca- 
price that had formerly taken him; it must be from 
a definite purpose; again he realized this. “Of 
course; you are right,” he said. ‘I wish I could 
have answered that old man differently. I fancy 
he was bound up in his son, though he quarrelled 
with him, and crossed him. But I couldn’t do it; 
it wasn’t possible.” He said to himself that if she 
said, ‘‘ No,’”’ now, he would be ruled by her agree- 
ment with him; and if she disagreed with him, he 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. es 


pe 
x 


would be ruled still by the chance, and would go: 
more to the Dryfooses’. 
rassed to the point of blushing, when she said BOY 
thing; and left him as it were ‘on his own hands, — 
“T should like to have given him that comfort; 1 


fancy he hasn’t much comfort in life; but theré, , 


seems no comfort in me.” He dropped his head 
in a fit attitude for compassion; but she poured n no 
pity upon it. 

“There is no comfort for us in ourselves,” she 
said. ‘It’s hard to get outside; but there’s only 
despair within. When we think we have done some- 
thing for others, by some great effort, we find it’s 
all for our own vanity.” 

“Yes,” said Beaton. ‘If I could paint pictures 
for righteousness’ sake, I should have been glad to 
do Conrad Dyrfoos for his father. I felt sorry for 
him. Did the rest seem very much broken up? 
You saw them all?” 

“Not all. Miss Dryfoos was ill, her sister said. 
It’s hard to tell how much people suffer. His mo- 
ther seemed bewildered. The younger sister is a 
simple creature; she looks like him; I think she 
must have something of his spirit.” 


“Not much spirit of any kind, I imagine,” said 1 


Beaton. ‘But she’s amiably iatecten 
say Miss Dryfoos was seriously ill?” 

““ No. 
her brother’s death.” 

““Does she seem that kind of person to you, Miss 
Vance ?” asked Beaton. 

“JT don’t know. I haven’t tried to see so much 
of them as I might, the past winter. I was not 
sure about her when I met her; I’ve never seen 
much of people, except in my own set, and the— 
very poor. I have been afraid I didn’t understand 
her. She may have a kind of pride that would not 
let her do herself justice.” 

Beaton felt the unconscious dislike in the en- 
deavor of praise. “Then she seems to you like a 
person whose life—its trials, its chances — would 
make more of than she is now 2” 

“T didn’t say that. I can’t judge of her at all; 
but where we don’t know, don’t you think we ought 
to imagine the best ?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Beaton. “I didn’t know but 
what I once said of them might have prejudiced you 
against them. I have accused myself of it.” He 
always took a tone of conscientiousness, of self-cen- 
sure, in talking with Miss Vance; he could not help it. 

“Oh, no. And I never allowed myself to form 
any judgment of her. She is very pretty, don’t you 
think, in a kind of way ?” 

“Very.” 

“She has a beautiful brunette coloring: 
floury white and the delicate pink in it. 
are beautiful.” 

“She’s graceful, too,” said Beaton. 
her in color; but I didn’t make it out.” 


Did hee 


that 
Her eyes 


“Tve tried 


He found himself embar a 


I supposed she might be prostrated na | 


wr 


mee” tee 


=s 


“ve wondered sometimes,” said Miss Vance, 
exe - that elusive qualiey you find in some 
ean e you try to paint, doesn’t characterize them all 
thre ugh. Miss Dryfoos might be ever so much finer 


™ and better than we would te out in the society way 


that seems the only way.” 

“Perhaps,” said Beaton, gloomily; and he went 
‘away profoundly discouraged by this last analysis 
of Christine’s character. The angelic impervious- 
mess of Miss Vance to properties of which his own 
wickedness was so keenly aware in Christine, might 
have made him laugh, if it had not been such a seri- 
ous affair with him. As it was, he smiled to think 
how very differently Alma Leighton would have 
judged her from Miss Vance’s premises. He liked 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


163 
that clear vision of Alma’s even when it pierced his 
own disguises. Yes, that was the light he had let 
die out, and it might have shone upon his path 
through life. Beaton never felt so poignantly the 
disadvantage of having on any given occasion been 
wanting to his own interests through his self-love as 
in this. He had no one to blame but himself for 
what had happened, but he blamed Alma for what 
might happen in the future because she shut out the 
way of retrieval and return, When he thought of 
the attitude she had taken toward him, it seemed 
incredible, and he was always longing to give her a 
final chance to reverse her final judgment. It ap- 
peared to him that the time had come for this now, 
if ever. 


Ve 


Wau we are still young we feel a kind of pride, 

a sort of fierce pleasure, in any important experi- 
ence, such as we have read of or heard of in the 
lives of others, no matter how painful. It was this 
pride, this Biexsare, which Beaton now felt in real- 
izing that the toils of fate were about him, that be- 
tween him and a future of which Chaos Dryfoos 
must be the genius, there was nothing but the will, 
the mood, the fancy of a girl who had not given him 
the hope ue either could ever again be in his favor. 

He had nothing to trust to, in fact, but his know- 

ledge that he had once had them at she did not 

deny that; but neither did she tineeat that he had 

flung away his power over them, and she had told 
him that they never could be his again, A man 

knows that he can love and wholly cease to love, 
not once merely, but several times; he recognizes 
the fact in regard to himself, both theoretically and 

practically; but in regard to women he cherishes 
the superstition of the romances that love is once 

for all, and forever. It was because Beaton would 

not believe that Alma Leighton, being a woman, 
could put him out of her heart after suffering him 
to steal into it, that he now hoped anything from 

her, and she had been so explicit when they last 
spoke of that affair that he did not hope much. He 

said to himself that he was going to cast himself on 
her mercy, to take whatever chance of life, love, and 
work there was in her having the smallest pity on 

him. If she would have none, then there was but 

one thing he could do: marry Christine and go 
abroad. He did not see how he could bring this 
alternative to bear upon Alma; even if she knew 
what he would do in case of a final rejection, he 

had grounds for fearing she would not care; but 

he brought it to bear upon himself, and it nerved 

him to a desperate courage. He could hardly wait 

for evening to come, before he went to see her; 

‘when it came, it seemed to have come too soon. 

He had wrought himself thoroughly into the con- 


viction that he was in earnest, and that every- 
thing depended upon her answer to him, but it 
was not till he found-himself in her presence, and 
alone with her, that he realized the truth of his 
conviction. Then the influences of her grace, 
her gayety, her arch beauty, above all her good 
sense, penetrated his soul like a subtle intoxica- 
tion, and he said to himself that he was right; he 
could not live without her; these attributes of 
hers were what he needed to win him, to cheer him, 
to charm him, to guide him. He longed so to 
please her, to ingratiate himself with her, that he 
attempted to be light like her, in his talk, but 
lapsed into abysmal absences, and gloomy recesses 
of introspection. 

“ What are you laughing at ?” he asked, suddenly 
starting from one of these. 

‘What you are thinking of.” 

“Tt’s nothing to laugh at. Do you know what it 
is ’m thinking of ?” 

‘Don’t tell, if it’s dreadful.” 

‘Oh, I dare say you wouldn’t think it’s dreadful,” 
he said, with bitterness. ‘It’s simply the case of a 
man who has made a fool of himself, and sees no 
help of retrieval in himself.” 

“Can any one else help a man unmake a fool of 
himself?” she asked with a smile. 

‘““Yes. In a case like this.” 

“Dear me! This is very interesting.” 

She did not ask him what the case was, but he 
was launched now, and he pressed on. ‘I am the 
man who has made a fool of himself—” 

(79 Oh 17? 

‘* And you can help me out if you will. 
wish you could see me as I really am,” 

“Do you, Mr. Beaton? Perhaps I do.” 

‘““No; youdon’t. You’ve formulated me in a cer- 
tain way, and you won’t allow for the change that 
takes place in every one. You have changed; why 
shouldn’t I?” 


Alma, I 


164 


‘Has this to do with your having made a fool of 
yourself ?”’ 

“Yes.” 

‘“‘Oh! Then I don’t see how you have changed.” 

She laughed, and he too, ruefully. ‘“ You’re cruel. 
Not but what I deserve your mockery. But the 
change was not from the capacity of making a fool 
of myself. I suppose I shall always do that more 
or less—unless you help me. Alma! Why can’t 
you have a little compassion? You know that I 
must always love you.” 

“Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying 
it, Mr. Beaton. But now you’ve broken your word—” 

“You are to blame for that. You knew I couldn’t 
keep it!” 

“Yes, ’m to blame. I was wrong to let you 
come—after that. And so I forgive you for speak- 
ing to me in that way again. But it’s perfectly im- 
possible and perfectly useless for me to hear you 
any more on that subject ; and so—good-by!”’ 

She rose, and he perforce with her. “And do 
you mean it?” he asked. ‘ Forever?” 

“Forever. This is truly the last time I will ever 
see you if I can help it. Oh, I feel sorry enough 
for you!” she said with a glance at his face. “I do 
believe you are in earnest. But it’s too late now. 
Don’t let us talk about it any more! But we shall, 
if we meet, and so—” 

“And so, good-by! Well, I’ve nothing more to 
say, and I might as well say that. I think you’ve 
been very good tome. It seems to me as if you had 
been—shall I say it ?—trying to give me a chance. 
Is that so?” 

She dropped her eyes, and did not answer. 

“You found it was no use! Well, I thank you 
for trying. It’s curious to think that I once had 
your trust, your regard, and now I haven’t it. You 
don’t mind my remembering that I had? It ll 
be some little consolation, and I believe it will be 
some help. I know I can’t retrieve the past, now. 
It zs too late. It seems too preposterous—perfectly 
lurid—that I could have been going to tell you what 
a tangle I’d got myself in, and to ask you to help 
untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but 
I'd like to have the sweetness of your pity in it— 
whatever it is.” 

She put out her hand. ‘‘ Whatever it is, I do pity 
you; I said that.” 

“Thank you.” He kissed the hand she gave him 
and went. 

He had gone on some such terms before; was it 
now for the last time? She believed it was. She 
felt in herself a satiety, a fatigue, in which his good 
looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble, 
were all alike repulsive. She did not acquit herself 
of the wrong of having let him think she might yet 
have liked him as she once did; but she had been 
honestly willing to see whether she could. It had 
mystified her to find that when they first met in New 


a 
A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


York, after their summer in St. Barnaby, she cared. 
nothing for him; she had expected to punish’ him. 
for his neglect, and then fancy him as before, but 
she did not. More and more she saw him selfish 
and mean, weak-willed, narrow-minded and _ hard- 
hearted; and aimless, with all his talent. She ad- 
mired his talent in proportion as she learned more: 
of artists, and perceived how uncommon it was; but 
she said to herself that if she were going to devote. 
herself to art, she would do it at first hand. She 
was perfectly serene and happy in her final rejection 
of Beaton ; he had worn out not only her fancy, but. 
her sympathy too. . 

This was what her mother would not believe when: 
Alma reported the interview to her; she would not 
believe it was the last time they should meet; death. 
itself can hardly convince us that it is the last time. 
of anything, of everything, between ourselves and 
the dead. ‘Well, Alma,” she said, “I hope you'll 
never regret what you’ve done.” 

“You may be sure I shall not regret it. If ever 
Pm low-spirited about anything, I'll think of giving 
Mr. Beaton his freedom, and that will cheer me up.” 

‘And don’t you expect to get married? Do you 
intend to be an old maid?” demanded her mother, 
in the bonds of the superstition women have so long 
been under to the effect that every woman must 
wish to get married, if for no other purpose than to 
avoid being an old maid. 

“Well, mamma,” said Alma, “I intend being a 
young one for a few years yet; and then I’ll see. 
If I meet the right person, all well and good; if not,, 
not. ButI shall pick and choose, as a man does; I 
won’t merely be picked and chosen.” 

“You can’t help yourself; you may be very glad 
if you are picked and chosen.” 

“What nonsense, mamma! A girl can get any: 
man she wants, if she goes about it the right way. 
And when my ‘fated fairy prince’ comes along, I 
shall just simply make furious love to him, and 
grab him. Of course, I shall make a decent pre- 
tence of talking in my sleep. I believe it’s done 
that way, more than half the time. The fated fairy 
prince wouldn’t see the princess in nine cases out of 
ten if she didn’t say something; he would go moon- 
ing along after the maids of honor.” 

Mrs. Leighton tried to look unspeakable horror; 
but she broke down and laughed. ‘‘ Well, you are. 
a strange girl, Alma,” 

‘I don’t know about that. But one thing I do. 
know, mamma, and that is that Prince Beaton isn’t 
the F.F. P. for me. How strange you are, mamma! 
Don’t you think it would be perfectly disgusting to 
accept a person you didn’t care for, and let him go 
on and love you and marry you? It’s sickening.” 

“Why certainly, Alma. It’s only because I know 
you did care for him once—” 

“And now I don’t. And he didn’t care for me: 
once, and now he does. And so we’re quits,” 


ae Oe ae fe 


aiid cri feel bi iota) Wen 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Tf T could believe—” 
“You had better brace up and try,mamma; for 
as Mr. Fulkerson says, it’s as sure as guns. From 


165 


the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he’s 
loathsome to me; and he keeps getting loathsomer. 
Ugh! Good-night!” 


XVI. 


“WELL, I guess she’s given him the grand bounce, 
at last,” said Fulkerson to March in one of their 
moments of confidence at the office. ‘“ That’s Mad’s 
inference from appearances—and disappearances ; 
and some little hints from Ma Leighton.” 

“Well, I don’t know that I have any criticisms to 
offer,” said March. “It may be bad for Beaton, 
but it’s a very good thing for Miss Leighton. Upon 
the whole I believe I congratulate her.” 

“Well, I don’t know. I always kind of hoped it 
would turn out the other way. You know I always 
had a sneaking fondness for the fellow.” 

“Miss Leighton seems not to have had.” 

“Tis a pity she hadn’t. I tell you, March, it ain’t 
so easy for a girl to get married, here in the East, 
that she can afford to despise any chance.” 

“Tsn’t that rather a low view of it ?” 

‘“Tt’s a common-sense view. Beaton has the 
_ making of a first-rate fellow in him. He’s the raw 

material of a great artist and a good citizen. All 
he wants is somebody to take him in hand and keep 
him from makin’ an ass of himself and kickin’ over 
the traces generally, and ridin’ two or three horses 
bareback at once.” 

“Tt seems a simple problem, though the metaphor 
is rather complicated,” said March. ‘“‘ But talk to 
Miss Leighton about it. J haven’t given Beaton 
the grand bounce.” 

He began to turn over the manuscripts on his ta- 
ble, and Fulkerson went away. But March found 
himself thinking of the matter from time to time 
during the day, and he spoke to his wife about it 
when he went home. She surprised him by taking 
Fulkerson’s view of it. 

“Yes, it’s a pity she couldn’t have made up her mind 
tohavehim. It’s better for a woman to be married.” 

“JT thought Paul only went so far as to say it was 
well. But what would become of Miss Leighton’s 
artistic career if she married ?” 

“Oh, her artistic career!” said Mrs. March with 
matronly contempt of it. 

“But look here!” cried her husband. 
she doesn’t like him ?” 

‘How can a girl of that age tell whether she 
likes any one or not?” 

“Tt seems to me you were able to tell at that age, 
Isabel. But let’s examine this thing. (This thing! 
I believe Fulkerson is characterizing my whole par- 
lance, as well as your morals.) Why shouldn’t we 
rejoice as much at a non-marriage aS a mar- 
riage? When we consider the enormous risks peo- 

ple take in linking their lives together, after not 


“ Suppose 


half so much thought as goes to an ordinary horse 
trade, I think we ought to be glad whenever they 
don’t do it. I believe that this popular demand for 
the matrimony of others comes from our novel- 
reading. We get to thinking that there is no other 
happiness or good fortune in life except marriage; 
and it’s offered in fiction as the highest premium 
for virtue, courage, beauty, learning, and saving 
human life. We all know it isn’t. We know 
that in reality, marriage is dog-cheap, and anybody 
can have it for the asking—if he keeps asking 
enough people. By-and-by some fellow will wake 
up and see that a first-class story can be written 
from the anti-marriage point of view; and he'll 
begin with an engaged couple, and devote his novel 
to disengaging them, and rendering them separately 
happy ever after in the dénotiment. It will make 
his everlasting fortune.” 

“Why don’t you write it, Basil?” she asked. “It’s 
a delightful idea. You could do it splendidly.” 

He became fascinated with the notion. He de- 
veloped it in detail; but at the end he sighed and 
said, “With this Avery Other Week work on my 
hands, of course I can’t attempt a novel. But per- 
haps I sha’n’t have it long.” 

She was instantly anxious to know what he meant, 
and the novel and Miss Leighton’s affair were both 
dropped out of their thoughts. ‘“ What do you 
mean? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything yet?” 

“Not a word. He knows no more about it than 
I do.. Dryfoos hasn’t spoken, and we’re both afraid 
to ask him. Of course, I couldn’t ask him.” 

66 No.” 

‘But it’s pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hang- 
ing by the gills, so, as Fulkerson says.” 

“Yes, we don’t know what to do.” 

March and Fulkerson said the same to each oth- 
er; and Fulkerson said that if the old man pulled 
out, he did not know what would happen. He had 
no capital to carry the thing on, and the very fact 
that the’ old man had pulled out would damage it 
so that it would be hard to get anybody else to 
put it. In the mean time Fulkerson was running 
Conrad’s office-work, when he ought to be looking 
after the outside interests of the thing; and he could 
not see the day when he could get married. 

‘*T don’t know which it’s worse for, March: you 
or me. I don’t know, under the circumstances, 
whether it’s worse to have a family or to want to 
have one. Of course—of course! We can’t hurry 
the old man up. It wouldn’t be decent, and it 
would be dangerous. We got to wait.” 


166 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some 
money; he did not need any, but he said maybe 
the demand would act as a hint upon him. One 
day, about a week after Alma’s final rejection of 
Beaton, Dryfoos came into March’s office. Fulker- 
son was out, but the old man seemed not to have 
tried to see him. 

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after 
he sat down, and looked at March awhile with his 
old eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of old eyes 
stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said abrupt- 
ly, ‘Mr. March, how would you like to take this 
thing off my hands ?” 

“T don’t understand, exactly,” March began ; but 
of course he understood that Dryfoos was offering 
to let him have Every Other Week, on some terms 
or other, and his heart leaped with hope. 

The old man knew he understood, and so he did 
not explain. He said, ‘I am going to Europe, to 
take my family there. The doctor thinks it might 
do my wife some good; and I ain’t very well my- 
self, and my girls both want to go; and so we’re 
goin’. If you want to take this thing off my hands, 
I reckon I can let you have it in ’most any shape 
you say. You’re all settled here, in New York, and 
I don’t suppose you want to break up, much, at 
your time of life,and I’ve been thinkin’ whether 
you wouldn’t like to take the thing.” 

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three 
times made March at last think of Fulkerson; he 
had been filled too full of himself to think of any 
one else till he had mastered the notion of such 
wonderful:good fortune as seemed about falling to 
him. But now, he did think of Fulkerson, and with 
some shame and confusion; for he remembered how 
when Dryfoos had last approached him there on the 
business of his connection with Avery Other Week, 
he had been very haughty with him, and told him 
that he did not know him in this connection. He 
blushed to find how far his thoughts had now run 
without encountering this obstacle of etiquette. 

‘‘ Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson ?” he asked. 

“No, [hain’t. It ain’t a question of management. 
It’s a question of buying and selling. I offer the 
thing to you, first. I reckon Fulkerson couldn’t get 
on very well without you.” 

March saw the real difference in the two cases, 
and he was glad to see it, because he could act more 
decisively if not hampered by an obligation to con- 
sistency. ‘I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos; 
extremely gratified; and it’s no use pretending that 
I shouldn’t be happy beyond bounds to get posses- 
sion of Hvery Other Week. But I don’t feel quite 
free to talk about it, apart from Mr. Fulkerson.” 

‘Oh, all right !” said the old man, with quick of- 
fence. 

March hastened to say, ‘I feel bound to Mr. Ful- 
kerson in every way. He got me to come here, and 
I couldn’t even seem to act without him.” 


He put it questioningly, and the old man ans wer- 
ed, “Yes, I can see that. 
can wait. But he looked impatient. 

“Very soon, now,” said March, looking at his 
watch. ‘He was only to be gone a moment,” and 
while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered 
why the old man should have come first to speak with 
him, and whether it was from some obscure wish to 


make him reparation for displeasures in the past, or — 


from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever: 
light he looked at it in, it was flattering. 

“Do you think of going abroad soon 2” he asked.. 

‘““What? Yes—tI don’t know—I reckon. We 
got our passage engaged. It’s on one of them 
French boats. We're goin’ to Paris.” 

“Oh! That will be interesting to the young 
ladies.” 

“Yes. I reckon we’re goin’ for them. ’Tain’t 
likely my wife and me-would want to pull up stakes 
at our age,” said the old man sorrowfully, 

‘But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos,” 
said March, with a kindness that was real, mixed as 
it was with the selfish interest he now had j in the 
intended voyage. 

“Well, maybe, maybe,” sighed the old man; and 
he dropped his head forward. “It don’t make a 
great deal of difference what we do or we don’t do, 
for the few years left.” 

“T hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual,” said 
March, finding the ground delicate and difficult, 

MY Middlin’, middlin’,” said the old man. “My 
daughter Christine ie ain’t very well.” 

“Oh,” said March. It was quite impossible for 
him to affect a more explicit interest in the fact. 
He and Dryfoos sat silent for a few moments, and 
he was vainly casting about in his thought for some- 
thing else which would tide them over the interval 
till Fulkerson came, when he heard his step on the 
stairs. 

“Hello, hello!” he said. “ Meeting of the clans!” 
It was always a meeting of the clans, with Fulker- 
son, or a field day, or an extra session, or a regular 
beatlare, whenever he saw people of any common 
interest together. ‘“ Hain’t seen you here fora good 
while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think some of running 
away ith Every Other Week, one while, but couldn't 
seem to work March up to the point.” 

He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the 
papers on the corner of March’s desk, and sat down 
there, and went on briskly with the nonsense he 
could always talk, while he was waiting for another 
to develop any matter of business; he told March 
afterward that he scented business in the air as 
soon as he came into the room where he and Dryfoos 
were sitting. 

Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to 
March, who said, after an inquiring look at him,. 
“Mr, Defoe tee been proposing to let us nea 
very Other Week, Fulkerson.” 


When ’ll he be in? IT 


- ae eee oa 5 oe a -ee 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


“Well, that’s good; that suits yours truly; March 
& Fulkerson, publishers and proprietors, won’t pre- 
tend it don’t, ¢f the terms are all right.” 

“The terms,” said the old man, “are whatever 
you want ’em. I haven’t got any more use for the 
concern—” He gulped, and stopped; they knew 
what he was thinking of, and they looked down, in 
pity. Hewenton. “I woon’t put any more money 
in it; but what I’ve put in a’ready, can stay; and 
you can pay me four per cent.” 

He got upon his feet; and March and Fulkerson 
stood, too. 

“Well, I call that pretty white,” said Fulkerson. 
“Tt’s a bargain, as far as I’m concerned. I suppose 
you’ll want to talk it over with your wife, March?” 

“Yes; I shall,” said March. “I can see that it’s 
a great chance; but I want to talk it over with my 
wife.” . ( 
“Well, that’s right,” said the old man. ‘“ Let me 
hear from you to-morrow.” 

He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round 
the room. He caught March about his stalwart 
girth and tried to make him waltz; the office boy 
came to the door, and looked on with approval. 

“Come, come, you idiot!” said March, rooting 
himself to the carpet. 

“Tis just throwing the thing into our mouths,” 
said Fulkerson. ‘‘The wedding will be this day 
week. Nocards! Teedle-lumpty diddle! Teedle- 
lumpty-dee! What do you suppose he means by 
it, March ?” he asked, bringing himself soberly up, 
of a sudden. ‘“ What is his little game? Or is he 
crazy? It don’t seem like the Dryfoos of my pre- 
vious acquaintance.” 

“T suppose,” March suggested, “that he’s got 
money enough, so that he don’t care for this—” 

“Pshaw! You're a poet! Don’t you know that 
the more money that kind of man has got, the more 
he cares for money? ‘It’s some fancy of his—like 
having Lindau’s funeral at his house— By jings, 
‘March, I believe yow’re his fancy !” 

“Oh, now! Don’t you be a poet, Fulkerson!” 

“JT do! He seemed to take a kind of shine to 
you from the day you wouldn’t turn off old Lindau ; 
he did indeed. It kind of shook him up. It made 
him think you had something in you. He was de- 
ceived by appearances. Look here! I’m going 
round to see Mrs. March with you, and explain the 
thing to her. I know Mrs. March! She wouldn’t 
believe you knew what you were going in for. She 
has a great respect for your mind, but she don’t 
think you’ve got any sense. Heigh ?” 

“ All right,” said March, glad of the notion; and 
it was really a comfort to have Fulkerson with him 
to develop all the points; and it was delightful to 
see how clearly and quickly she seized them; it 
made March proud of her. She was only angry that 
- they had lost any time in coming to submit so plain 
a ease to her. Mr. Dryfoos might change his mind 


167 


in the night, and then everything would be lost. 
They must go to him instantly, and tell him that 
they accepted; they must telegraph him. 

‘Might as well send a district messenger; he’d 
get there next week,” said Fulkerson. ‘No, no! 
It’ll all keep till to-morrow, and be the better for it. 
If he’s got this fancy for March, as I say, he ain’t 
agoing to change it in a single night. People 
don’t change their fancies for March in a lifetime. 
Heigh ?” 

When Fulkerson turned up very early at the office, 
next morning, as March did, he was less strenuous 
about Dryfoos’s fancy for March. It was as if 
Miss Woodburn might have blown cold upon that 
theory, as something unjust to his own merit, for 
which she would naturally be more jealous than he. 

March told him, what he had forgotten to tell him. 
the day before, though he had been trying, all 
through their excited talk, to get it in; that the 
Dryfooses were going abroad. 

“Oh, ho!” cried Fulkerson. ‘“ That’s the milk in 
the cocoanut, is it? Well, I thought there must be 
something.” 

But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all 
in her conviction that it was Mr. Dryfoos’s fancy for 
her husband which had moved him to make him this. 
extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that it 
had first been made to him, without regard to Ful- 
kerson. ‘And perhaps,” she went on, “ Mr. Dryfoos 
has been changed—softened ; and doesn’t find money 
all in all, any more. He’s had enough to change 
him, poor old man !” 

“Does anything from without change us?” her 
husband mused aloud. ‘ We’re brought up to think 
so by the novelists, who really have the charge of 
people’s thinking, nowadays. But I doubt it, espe- 
cially if the thing outside is some great event, some- 
thing cataclysmal, like this tremendous sorrow of 
Dryfoos’s.” 

‘‘Then what is it that changes us ?” demanded his. 
wife, almost angry with him for his heresy. 

“ Well, it won’t do to say, the Holy Spirit indwell- 
ing.. That would sound like cant at this day. But 
the old fellows that used to say that had some 
glimpses of the truth. They knew that it is the 
still, small voice that the soul heeds; not the deaf- 
ening blasts of doom. I suppose I should have to. 
say that we didn’t change at all. We develop. 
There’s the making of several characters in each of 
us; we are each several characters, and sometimes. 
this character has the lead in us, and sometimes. 
that. From what Fulkerson has told me of Dry- 
foos I should say he had always had the potentiali- 
ty of better things in him than he has ever been 
yet; and perhaps the time has come for the good 
to have its chance. The growth in one direction 
has stopped; it’s begun in another; that’s all. The 
man hasn’t been changed by his son’s death; it 
stunned, it benumbed him; but it couldn’t change: 


it 
168 
him. It was an event, like any other, and it had 
to happen as much as his being born. It was fore- 
cast from the beginning of time, and was as entire- 
ly an effect of his coming into the world—” 

“Basil! Basil!” cried his wife. “This is fatal- 
ism !”” 

“Then you think,” he said, “that a sparrow falls 
to the ground without the will of God?” and he 
laughed provokingly. But he went on more sober- 
ly. “JZ don’t know what it all means, Isabel, 
though I believe it means good. What did Christ 
himself say? That if one rose from the dead it 
would not avail. And yet we are always looking 
for the miraculous! I believe that unhappy old 
man truly grieves for his son, whom he treated 
cruelly without the final intention of cruelty, for 
he loved him and wished to be proud of him; 
but I don’t think his death has changed him, any 
more than the smallest event in the chain of events 
remotely working through his nature from the be- 
ginning. But why do you think he’s changed at 
all? Because he offers to sell me Every Other 
Week on easy terms? He says himself that he has 
no further use for the thing; and he knows per- 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


fectly well that he couldn’t get his money out of it 
now, without an enormous shrinkage. He couldn’t 
appear at this late day as the owner, and sell it to 
anybody but Fulkerson and me for a fifth of what 
it’s cost him. He can sell it to us for all it’s cost 
him; and four per cent. is no bad interest on his 
money till we can pay it back. It’s a good thing 
for us; but we have to ask whether Dryfoos has: 
done us the good; or whether it’s the blessing of 
heaven. If it’s merely the blessing of heaven I 
don’t propose being grateful for it.” 

March laughed again, and his wife said, “It’s dis- 
gusting.” 

“Tt’s business,” he assented. ‘“ Business is busi- 
ness; but I don’t say it isn’t disgusting. Lindau 
had a low opinion of it.” 

“T think that with all his faults, Mr. Dryfoos is 
a better man than Lindau,” she proclaimed. 

“Well, he’s certainly able to offer us a better 
thing in Hvery Other Week,” said March. 

She knew he was enamored of the literary finish 
of his cynicism, and that at heart he was as humbly 
and truly grateful as she was for the good fortune 
opening to them. 


XVII. 


Beaton was at his best when he parted for the 
last time with Alma Leighton, for he saw then that 
what had happened to him was the necessary con- 
sequence of what he had been, if not what he 
had done. Afterward he lost this clear vision; he 
began to deny the fact; he drew upon his know- 
ledge of life, and in arguing himself into a different 
frame of mind he alleged the case of different peo- 
ple who had done and been much worse things than 
he, and yet no such disagreeable consequence had 
befallen them. Then he saw that it was all the 
work of blind chance, and he said to himself that it 
was this that made him desperate, and willing to 
call evil his good, and to take his own wherever he 
could find it. There was a great deal that was lit- 
erary and factitious and tawdry in the mood in which 
he went to see Christine Dryfoos, the night when the 
Marches sat talking their prospects over; and no- 
thing that was decided in his purpose. He knew 
what the drift of his mind was, but he had always 
preferred to let chance determine his events, and 
now since chance had played him such an ill turn 
with Alma, he left it the whole responsibility. Not 
in terms, but in effect, this was his thought as he 
walked on uptown to pay the first of the visits 
which Dryfoos had practically invited him to resume. 
He had an insolent satisfaction in having delayed it 
so long; if he was going back he was going back 
on his own conditions, and these were to be as hard 
and humiliating as he could make them. But this 
intention again was inchoate, floating, the stuff of 


an intention, rather than intention; an expression 
of temperament chiefly. 

He had been expected before that. Christine had 
got out of Mela that her father had been at Beaton’s 
studio, and then she had gone at the old man and 
got from him every smallest fact of the interview 
there. She had flung back in his teeth the good- 
will toward herself with which he had gone to Bea- 
ton. She was furious with shame and resentment; 
she told him he had made bad worse, that he had 
made a fool of himself to no end; she spared neither 
his age, nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his will 
could not rise against hers. She filled the house 
with her rage, screaming it out upon him; but when 
her fury was once spent, she began to have some 
hopes from what her father had done. She no 
longer kept her bed; every evening she dressed 
herself in the dress Beaton admired the most, and 
sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had 
fixed a day in her own mind before which, if he 
came, she would forgive him all he had made her 
suffer: the mortification, the suspense, the despair. 
Beyond this, she had the purpose of making her fa- 
ther go to Europe; she felt that she could no longer 
live in America, with the double disgrace that had 
been put upon her. 

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming 
the insolent caprice seized him to ask for the young 
ladies, instead of the old man, as he had supposed 
of course he should do. The maid who answered 
the bell, in the place of the reluctant Irishman of 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


other days, had all his hesitation in admitting that 
the young ladies were at home. 

He found Mela in the drawing-room. At sight of 
him she looked scared; but she seemed to be re- 
assured by his calm. He asked if he was not to 
have the pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos too; and 
Mela said she reckoned the girl had gone upstairs 
to tell her. Mela was in black, and Beaton noted 
how well the solid sable became her rich, red blond 
beauty; he wondered what the effect prould be with 
Christine. 

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning. 
He fancied that she wore the lustrous black silk, 
with the breadths of white Venetian lace about the 
neck, which he had praised, because he praised 
it. Her cheeks burned with a Jacqueminot crim- 
son; what should be white in her face was chalky 
white. She carried a plumed ostrich fan, black 
and soft, and after giving him her hand, sat down 
and waved it to and fro slowly, as he remembered 
her doing the night they first met. She had no 
ideas, except such as related intimately to herself, 
and she had no gabble, like Mela; and she let him 
talk. it was past the day when she had promised 
herself she would forgive him; but as he talked on 
she felt all her passion for him revive, and the con- 
flict of desires, the desire to hate, the desire to love, 
made a dizzying whirl in her brain. She looked at 
him, half doubting whether he was really there or not. 
He had never looked so handsome, with his dreamy 
eyes floating under his heavy overhanging hair, and 
his pointed brown beard defined against his lustrous 
shirt front. His mellowly modulated, mysterious 
voice lulled her; when Mela made an errand out of 
the room, and Beaton crossed to her and sat down 
by her she shivered. 

“* Are you cold ?” he asked, and she felt the cruel 
mockery and exultant consciousness of power in his 
tone, as perhaps a wild thing feels captivity in the 
voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would 
still forgive him if he asked her. 

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the 
former level; but Beaton had not said anything 
that really Hee what she wished, and she saw that 
he intended to say nothing. Her heart began to 
burn like a fire in her breast. 

“You been tellun’ him about our goun’ to Hu- 
rope?” Mela asked. ’ 

“No,” said Christine, briefly, and looking at the 
fan spread out on her lap. 

Beaton asked when; and then he rose, and said 


a 


169 


if it was so soon, he supposed he should not see 
them again, unless he saw them in Paris; he might 
very likely run over, during the summer. He said 
to himself that he had given it a fair trial with 
Christine, and he could not make it go. 

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp, and mechan- 
ically followed him to the door of the drawing-room 3 
Mela came too; and while he was putting on his 
overcoat, she gurgled and bubbled in good-humor 
with all the world. Christine stood looking at him, 
and thinking how handsomer still he was in his over- 
coat; and that fire burned fiercer in her. She felt 
him more than life to her and knew him lost, and 
the frenzy that makes a woman kill the man she 
loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she can- 
not have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul. 
He gave his hand to Mela, and said, in his wind- 
harp stop, ‘‘ Good-by.” 

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed 
it aside with a scream of rage; she flashed at him, 
and with both hands made a feline pass at the face 
he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an 
instant of stupefaction, he pulled open the door be- 
hind him, and ran out into the street. 


“Well, Christine Dryfoos!” said Mela. “Spag at 
him like a wild-cat!” 
‘“T don’t care,” Christine shrieked. “Tl tear 


his eyes out!” She flew upstairs to her own room, 
and left the burden of the explanation to Mela, who 
did it justice. 

Beaton found himself, he did not know how, in 
his studio, reeking with perspiration and breathless. 
He must almost have run. He struck a match with 
a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass. 
He expected to see the bleeding marks of her nails 
on his cheeks; but he could see nothing. He grov- 
elled inwardly; it was all so low and coarse and 
vulgar; it was all so just and apt to his deserts. 

There was a pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac 
on the mantel which he had kept loaded to fire at a 
cat in the area. He took it and sat looking into the 
muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill 
him. It slipped through his hand, and struck the 
floor, and there was a report; he sprang into the 
air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found 
himself still alive, with only a burning line along 
his cheek, such as one of Christine’s finger-nails 
might have left. 

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact 
that he had got his punishment in the right way, and 
that his case was not to be dignified into tragedy. 


XVIII. 


Tur Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the 
Dryfooses off on the French steamer. There was 
no longer any business obligation on them to be civ- 
il, and there was greater kindness for that reason 


in the attention they offered. very Other Week 
had been made over to the joint ownership of March 
and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a 
hardness on Dryfoos’s side, which certainly left 


fe 


a eee ia a ee ED ee aS 


170 A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


Mrs. March with a sense of his incomplete regener- 
ation. Yet when she saw him there on the steam- 
er, she pitied him; he looked wearied and bewilder- 
ed; even his wife, with her twitching head, and her 
prophecies of evil, croaked hoarsely out, while she 
‘clung to Mrs. March’s hand where they sat together 
till the leave-takers were ordered ashore, was less 
pathetic. Mela was looking after both of them, and 
trying to cheer them, in a joyful excitement. “TI 
tell ’em it’s goun’ to add ten years to both their 
lives,” she said. “The voyage ’ll do their healths 
good; and then, we’re gittun’ away from that mis- 
-er’ble pack o’ servants that was eatun’ us up, there 
in New York. I hate the place!” she said, as if 
they had already left it. ‘ Yes, Mrs. Mandel’s goun’, 
too,” she added, following the direction of Mrs. 
March’s eyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel speak- 
ing to Christine on the other side of the cabin. 
“Her and Christine had a kind of a spat, and she 
was goun’ to leave, but here only the other day, 


‘Christine offered to make it up with her, and now 


they’re as thick as thieves. Well, I reckon we 
couldn’t very well ’a’ got along without her. She’s 
about the only one that speaks French in this fam- 
ily.” 

Mrs. March’s eyes still dwelt upon Christine’s 
face: it was full of a furtive wildness. She seem- 
ed to be keeping a watch to prevent herself from 
looking as if she were looking for some one. 

“Do you know,” Mrs. March said to her husband, 
as they jingled along homeward in the Christopher 
Street bob-tail car, ‘‘I thought she was in love with 
that detestable Mr. Beaton of yours, at one time; 
and that he was amusing himself with her.” 

‘“‘T can bear a good deal, Isabel,’ said March, 
“but I wish you wouldn’t attribute Beaton to me. 
He’s the invention of that Mr. Fulkerson of yours.” 

“Well, at any rate I hope, now, you'll both get 
rid of him, in the reforms you’re going to carry 
out.” , 

These reforms were for a greater economy in the 
management of Hvery Other Week; but in their 
very nature they could not include the suppression 
of Beaton. He had always shown himself capable 
and loyal to the interests of the magazine, and both 
the new owners were glad to keep him. He was 
glad to stay, though he made a gruff pretence of in- 
difference, when they came to look over the new ar- 
rangement with him. In his heart he knew that 
he was a fraud; but at least he could say to himself 
with truth that he had not now the shame of taking 
Dryfoos’s money. 

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points 
where it had seemed indispensable to spend, as long 
as they were not spending their own: that was only 
human. Fulkerson absorbed Conrad’s department 
into his, and March found that he could dispense 
with Kendricks in the place of assistant which he 
had lately filled, since Fulkerson had decided that 


March was overworked. They reduced the number ‘ 


of illustrated articles and they systematized the pay- 
ment of contributors strictly according to the sales 
of each number, on their original plan of co-opera- 
tion: they had got to paying rather lavishly for 
material without reference to the sales. 

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and 


went on his wedding journey out to Niagara, and — 
down the St. Lawrence to Quebec over the line of — 
travel that the Marches had taken in their wedding — 


journey. He had the pleasure of going from Mon- 


treal to Quebec on the same boat on which he first : 


met March. 

They have continued very good friends, and their 
wives are almost without the rivalry that usually em- 
bitters the wives of partners. At first Mrs. March 
did not like Mrs, Fulkerson’s speaking of her hus- 
band as the Ownah, and March as the Edito’; but it 
appeared that this was only a convenient method 
of recognizing the predominant quality in each, and 
was meant neither to affirm nor to deny anything. 
Colonel Woodburn offered as his contribution to the 
celebration of the copartnership, which Fulkerson 
could not be prevented from dedicating with a little 
dinner, the story of Fulkerson’s magnanimous be- 
havior in regard to Dryfoos at that crucial moment 
when it was a question whether he should give up 
Dryfoos or give up March. Fulkerson winced at it; 
but Mrs. March told her husband that now, what- 
ever happened, she should never have any misgiv- 
ings of Fulkerson again; and she asked him if he 
did not think he ought to apologize to him for the 
doubts with which he had once inspired her. March 
said that he did not think so. 

The Fulkersons spent the summer at a sea-side 
hotel in easy reach of the city; but they returned 
early to Mrs. Leighton’s, with whom they are to board 
till spring, when they are’ going to fit up Fulkerson’s 
bachelor apartment for house-keeping. Mrs. March, 
with her Boston scruple, thinks it will be odd, living 
over the Hvery Other Week offices; but there will be 
a separate street entrance to the apartment; and 
besides, in New York you may do anything. 

The future of the Leightons promises no immedi- 
ate change. Kendricks goes there a good deal to see 
the Fulkersons, and Mrs. Fulkerson says he comes 
to see Alma. He has seemed taken with her ever 
since he first met her at Dryfoos’s, the day of Lin- 
dau’s funeral, and though Fulkerson objects to dat-~ 
ing a fancy of that kind from an occasion of that 
kind, he justly argues with March that there can be 
no harm in it, and that we are liable to be struck by 
lightning any time. In the mean while there is no 
proof that Alma returns Kendricks’s interest, if he 
feels any. She has got a little bit of color into the 
fall exhibition; but the fall exhibition is never so 
good as the spring exhibition. Wetmore is rather 
sorry she has succeeded in this, though he promoted 
ber success. He says her real hope is in black and 


Re ea 


A Hazard of New Fortunes. 


_ white, and it is a pity for her to lose sight of her 
original aim of drawing for illustration. 

News has come from Paris of the engagement 
of Christine Dryfoos. There the Dryfooses met 
with the success denied them in New York; many 
_ American plutocrats must await their apotheosis in 
Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a 
translation. Shortly after their arrival, they were 
celebrated in the newspapers as the first million- 
aire American family of natural gas extraction who 
had arrived in the capital of civilization; and at a 
French watering-place Christine encountered her 
fate: a nobleman full of present debts and of 
duels in the past. Fulkerson says the old man can 
manage the debtor and Christine can look out for 
the duellist. ‘They say those fellows generally 
whip their wives. He'd better not try it with Chris- 
tine, I reckon, unless he’s practised with a panther.” 


One day, shortly after their return to town in the 
autumn from the brief summer outing they per- 


Fi 


171 


mitted themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance. 
At first they did not know her in the dress of the 
sisterhood which she wore; but she smiled joyfully, 
almost gayly on seeing them, and though she hur- 
ried by with the sister who accompanied her, and 
did not stay to speak, they felt that the peace that 
passeth understanding had looked at them from her 
eyes. 

“Well, she is at rest, there can’t be any doubt of 
that,” he said, as he glanced round at the drifting 
black robe, which followed her free, nunlike walk. 

“Yes now she can do all the good she likes,” 
sighed his wife. ‘I wonder—I wonder if she ever 
told his father about her talk with poor Conrad 
that day he was shot?” 

“JT don’t know. I don’t care. In any event it 
would be right. She did nothing wrong. If she 
unwittingly sent him to his death, she sent him to 
die for God’s sake, for man’s sake.” 

“Yes—yes. But still—” 

“Well, we must trust that look of hers.” 


THE END. 


oN 
da. 


instructive. book, as brilliant in its | various parts of the country visited by him he — 

is warm in its kindness; and we | tells the truth, but with such marvellous tact | 
is witha patriotic impulse that-| that the most thin skinned will not find their . © | 
hall be glad to learn that the | susceptibilities wounded... . A brilliant, kind- = 
eaders bears some proportion to | ly, wise book that will teach Americans who 
and its power for good.—JV. Y. Oom-| read it what a fait land they live in and how. |. 
EES ITS fog Seater ais Ses ele a | varied are its charms.—WV. Y. Mail and Hepress, 
es made from studies of the country | Perhaps the most accurate and: graphic-ac- 
ople upon the ground... , They are | count of these portions of the country that has 

man and ‘a scholar ‘without | appeared, taken allinall.,.. A book most charm-. 

, and only anxious to state the facts'| ing—a book that no American ¢an fail to enjoy, 
re . When told in the pleasant appreciate, and highly prize. — Boston Traveler, 
ye way. of Mr. Warner the studies| A book full of interest to all classes of read- 
elightful as they are insiructive—CwW- | ers. It is not a comprehensive account of rap: — 
nter-Ocean.. eee ee idly developing sections of our continent; but 
arner shares with certain portrait-paint- | it is a mirror of representative places and of dero2.. & 
gift of making the pictures he | velopments, tendencies, and the dispositionsand . © ~ 
Pchdee while be yet finds a| habits of people who are doing their share of... 

1g down the blemishes that dis- | the work of completing the civilization of North 

In drawing the people of the America. Troy Press, 8g ce ars ik 8 


GRIM GE. Richly Tllustrated by C.S. Reruarr. pp. vill, 
st, 8vo, pit Leather, $2 00. F472 ot he See ee 


‘pen-pic 3 of the characters 
esort, of the manner of life fol- 
or and absurdities 
or Newport; or Bar Har- 
em e, are as good-natured as 
ar, The satire, when there is any, 
dest, and the general tone is that 
© look on the brightest side of the 
re-seeking world with which he 
astian Union, N.Y. | 

ne is good; humorous, and funny; 
nd Reinhart.combined must have 
- Human nature is most deliciously 
y Mr. Warner’s skilful pen and Mr, 
us pencil.— Boston Advertiser, 
inhart’s spirited and realistic illustra-’ 
tractive, and contribute to make. 
dsome book. We have already 


Babe cies Soe 


commented upon the earlier chapters of the 
text; and the happy blending of travel and fic 
tion which we looked forward to with confi 
dence did, in fact, distinguish this story among. 
the serials of the year.— WV. Y. Huentng Post, °° 
The watering-placesareallexquisitelytouched = 

with the life which they represent, and the Pace es ee 
ures will stand for an accurate exposition of eee 


‘ ee SRR 


ga, oO 


~~ 


their social features, ... The writingisin Mr.) 
Warner’s best vein. It is not intentionally hu- . 
morous, neither is it forgetful of that quality.» 

The book delights the reader... . It is enter- > 
taining in the highest degree as. a& treatment of | 
American society, and thisiswhatitwasintend- 
-ed to be. The heroine of the story isa beauti = 
fulgirl, and there is a delicacy in the treatment 

of her character which can better’ be enjoyed. 
than described.— Boston Herald, = = 


vy Bs 
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new humorous novel,| American Novelists. W. D. Howells and Laf. st 2 
“The Colonists of Ta-| . catio Wearn will furnish novelettes. : 

ue Koy Ju American Universities.’ Articles on Yale, Hak : 
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VENLUICS of the fa- Charles Eliot N orton, and William M. Sloane | Mes a series. y 


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